


Brush Pass

by HappilyShanghaied



Category: Veronica Mars (TV), Veronica Mars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, BAMF Logan, BAMF Veronica, I make up for gross Nazis by having Logan x VM bang all over Europe, Logan POV, Logan x Weevil BroTP, Nazis, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Rough Sex, Semi-Public Sex, Thriller, WWII Spy AU, circa 1940's, inglorious basterds meets the Americans, its a bangathon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-27
Updated: 2018-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-02 14:37:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 33,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8671354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HappilyShanghaied/pseuds/HappilyShanghaied
Summary: He couldn't really blame them, he would have probably made the same assumptions were he in their shoes, but he was tired of being prejudged. “Look, I signed up for this shitshow, and I wouldn't have done it if I weren't prepared to get my hands a little dirty.” “If you think this is getting your hands dirty, then you’re greener than I thought.” The agent paused, as if she were about to say something else, but then took a sip of wine instead. “I know why you were late tonight. You probably spent hours wandering around the city, maybe halfway down the bottle, wondering if you'd done the right thing today, questioning if you were still a good person?”“Wrong. I was never a good person,” he said, a little too quickly, then drained the rest of his glass in one go. He refilled it with a shaky hand, the crimson wine sloshed over the lip of the goblet onto the white tablecloth beneath. Her head tipped to the side as she stared at his face, expression unmoved. “Telling yourself that isn't going to make this job any easier, and it's definitely not going to make it true. You wouldn't be sitting here, if it were.”





	1. Lisbon

**Author's Note:**

> Hey there! Welcome to my entry into the soulmates AU collection.
> 
> This is a 1940's WWII spy fic, but really, it's just a great excuse for Logan and Veronica to have frantic sex in inconvenient places all around Europe. There's political intrigue! And smut! And NO beta! 
> 
> ***
> 
> WARNING: Since this takes place during WWII, spy Logan has to hang out with a lot of Nazis, so be prepared for period-appropriate ethnic slurs (i.e. Gypsy instead of Rroma). I don't linger on them, but I don't shy away from them either. I'm Jewish, so I felt like it was irresponsible to do a WWII AU and completely gloss over the Nazi stuff. There won't be anything too graphic though, because this is a sexy spy fic, not a sad Holocaust fic. Think: Inglorious Basterds meets The Americans with a dash of James Bond.
> 
> ***

_Brush Pass:_

_a brief encounter where something passes between agents in a public place_

_that should never be seen._

 

* * *

 

 

**LISBON**

**_August, 1944_ **

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

Perched on the corner of the sprawling Praça dos Restauradores, a wide, central avenue that ran along the perimeter of a small but busy square, the Aveneida Palace Hotel could be easily reached from a large number of adjacent rooftops. The grand, white-washed building was tucked far enough away from the main center of Lisbon to lessen the possibility of collateral damage, but still close enough to offer the shooter enough crowd cover for an easy escape. 

 

They would be spoiled for choice.

 

Bertolt Pfannmüller was what the OSS liked to refer to as a ‘soft target’. He wasn't a person of interest, didn't have the ear of anybody important and would barely have made a blip on the OSS radar, were it not for the serendipitous location of his government desk job. 

 

  
And that specific desk happened to be on the same office floor as Adolf Ziegler’s, Hitler’s favorite painter and president of the Chamber of Culture - the division of government responsible for the location and destruction of  _Entartete Kunst_ , which could be loosely translated in English as ‘degenerate art’.

 

Logan Echolls dragged his index finger around the rim of his poorly made Gibson, trying his best to clear his mind of the OSS sniper waiting just across the street, perched and ready for action. 

 

He didn't know where he was hidden, and he didn't want to know. There were reasons honeypot operatives (oh, how he hated the nickname) were kept in the dark about their armed counterparts, beyond the obvious teeth-scraping discomfort of knowing that they were walking directly into a possible firefight and putting their lives in the hands of a person they'd never met before. One hesitant step or a stolen glance in the wrong direction could tip off the mark, not just bungling the mission but putting American lives in danger. Most notably, their own.

 

As the pale, slightly-overweight arts finance minister with modified Kaiser Wilhelm mustache, droned on about the evils of Freud and Jewish mind control, Logan dutifully nodded his head, feigning an intense level of interest not felt since his first time seeing a live woman naked.

 

He had already been forced to sit through two hours of lectures about the ‘interior races’ and German Exceptionalism, and his patience was wearing thin. If his unit didn't wrap this up quickly, he might just walk into the line of fire by choice.

 

But, he couldn't deny the sense of pride he felt in himself, a sensation so foreign to him it was like wearing a stranger’s clothes. 

 

It was ironic, he knew, since the entire English-speaking world had practically been showering him with accolades simply for existing. But this - the one accomplishment he actually felt proud of - they could never know about. It would be his alone.

 

Growing up under the harsh glare of Hollywood Boulevard, everybody knew Logan Echoll’s story. From his famous parents’ storybook courtship to his father’s arrest for murdering Logan’s girlfriend, an act that drove his glamorous mother - and several of her most devoted fans - to suicide, every gory detail of Logan’s most painful and private moments had been splashed all over the tabloids since the day he'd emerged screaming into the world.

 

When Logan was 16, his father, Aaron, stopped putting the strap to his back long enough to shove a tin sword into his hand. He said they were going to spend some quality time together, but what he really meant was that the studio wanted to make a sequel to ‘The Buccaneer’, called ‘Son of The Buccaneer’. They thought audiences would love it if the ‘son’ were played by Aaron’s real son. They weren't wrong.

 

A decade passed quickly, with so much momentum he could barely breathe much less make his own choices. At least, that was before her.

 

’Some Girls Are’ was scheduled to be a 35 day shoot off the coast of the Yucatan, a sexy ‘meet-cute’ about three society girls on a leisure cruise in Hawaii falling in love with three young sailors stationed at Pearl Harbor. Lilly Kane arrived four days late to set, slightly drunk, and was so damn charming that even the stodgy director couldn't hold a grudge. 

 

Logan was in love, and - by some miracle - he managed to get her to love him back. Luckily for their relationship, audiences seem to love them together too, and they soon became on onscreen team, shooting five movies together over the course of three years. 

 

Pretty soon, his whole world narrowed down to just work and Lilly, and he was a happier man for it. But just as sudden as her appearance was in his life, she was gone. Cut down in her prime by an aging matinee idol, who viewed his own son as both his greatest accomplishment and as the living embodiment of his own mortality. 

 

Logan wasn't sure if his father went to his house with the intent to kill Lilly, but she still ended up face down in a swimming pool like a bad Hollywood cliche. And Logan - being the fiancé - was named the prime suspect.

 

But being filmed in front of 30 crew members was as rock solid an alibi as one could get, so he was quickly cleared. And, when his mother produced a missing ashtray from Logan’s living room that she'd found in the trunk of Aaron's car, covered in what later proved to be Lilly’s blood type, an arrest was quickly made.

 

The papers said his father went mad, claimed he was high on drink or speculated he must've been drugged without his knowledge. America was in shock at what Aaron had become. But Logan knew this who he really was, who he had always been. He has the scars to prove it. And so he did, in court, and the world followed every detail with hungry devastation.

 

When the verdict came back and his father was acquitted, Logan hid in the back of the kindly sheriff’s office and wept.

 

The man was was patient with him, wrapped an arm around Logan more easily than his own father ever had. He told Logan that Lilly’s death wasnt his fault, that Logan couldn't have predicted what would happen that night, any more than he had reason to suspect she would be killed any other night he might have been working. That it was true, didn't make it any less a cold comfort.

 

By the time Lynn Echolls jumped from the walkway of the Coronado Bridge, Logan had run out of tears.

 

So, a month later, when Uncle Sam came knocking, and offered Logan the opportunity to save lives in the real world the way he did onscreen, he jumped at the opportunity. Little did he know it would mean playing his most challenging role yet: the absolute worst version of himself imaginable.

 

* * *

 

_A female hand roughly dipped down the back of Logan’s trousers, fastening a shirt made of a thick, girdle-like material between his legs._

 

_Normally, he'd never find a reason to complain about a woman palming his groin, but Mac - the oddly-named, ‘technology cobbler’ sent to kit him out - was being more than a little rough, and it wasn't in the good way._

 

_“Buy a girl a drink first, will ya?” He inhaled at the pinch of the snaps, trying his best not to shrink away from her grasping, icy-cold fingers._

 

_"Aww, am I making you blush?” She straightened the waist of his pants like a mother hen, then folded her arms across her chest and took a long, appraising look at him. “Thought you were supposed to be some kind of lothario?”_

 

_“I take it you're not a fan?” He raised an eyebrow, vaguely amused. It wasn't often his charms had no effect on a woman. “More the bookish type, are you?”_

 

_“More like…the sewing circle type.” She paused, waiting for a reaction that never came._

 

_He's not sure what she was expecting him to say. Half the women in Hollywood were closet lesbians. “Some of my best friends are seamstresses.”_

 

_Mac smiled faintly and pressed her fingers to the front of his chest to test out the tensile strength of the vest. “Don’t go getting brazen with this. It's not a flak jacket, it's only thick enough to protect you from a blade….and a dull one at that.”  She stood back up and considered her work, index finger tapping against her bottom lip in thought. “The jacket should probably still fit, but you're going to look thinner under your clothes.”_

 

_“My producers will thank you for that.” He stretched his pecs to test the tension of the garment, it didn't have a lot of give. “How do you women wear girdles?”_

 

_“We women don't all wear girdles. Some of us enjoy the act of breathing unemcumbered.” She handed him a crisp, white dress shirt, and left him to do up his own buttons._

 

_He fumbled with the first few, a symptom of his frayed nerves, then took a deep breath and fastened the rest through sense memory._

 

_“Well, we can just forget about the mic.” Mac scrubbed a frustrated hand through her bobbed hair and frowned. “The hot spots Weevil made around the the bar should pick up most of your conversation, but you're going to have to speak up. Big Daddy is not going to be pleased.”_

 

_“If six seasons of Summer stock taught me anything, it's how to project my voice.” He offered up his thousand watt smile. If that didn't lift her mood, he was out of tricks._

 

_She stared flatly at him for a moment before one corner of her mouth picked up very slightly as she popped a pair of radio frequency cuff links into his sleeves. “They said you were funny.”_

 

_He pulled on a light weight dinner jacket and ran his hands over the lapels to brush off the lint. “Well, dad did say to always leave ‘em laughing. Of course, he turned out to be a murderer, so…guess not everybody got the joke.”_

 

_Mac produced a gold rectangular cigarette case from a fabric bag and slipped it into the interior breast pocket of Logan’s jacket, then rapped the metal covering his heart. “Last guy who thought he was funny - an Agent we called Piz - took two to the chest in Düseldorf. Those rabbi walks-into-a-bar jokes don't really play around those parts the way you'd think.”_

 

_Logan shrugged, determined not to show any fear. “Not everybody's got my timing.”_

 

_“I'm glad to hear you've got good timing, because you're gonna need it.” She pulled a cube-shaped box from her bag and opened it, facing him. “This is something we call a digital watch. It has a jump-hour mechanism that flips the cards to the exact minute - you may have seen something like it at some train stations? It takes away a lot of the guesswork as far as operations go, because we’re all synced up.” She flashed a matching watch on her wrist. “Helps avoid nasty surprises, like being accidentally shot in the head if you walk outside a minute too late.”_

 

_A chill ran though Logan’s body, despite the extra layers he was wearing. “You said you were starting me off small, that this was a starter mission.”_

 

_“The mark is not SS. That's small as far as we’re concerned. Big Daddy usually doesn't get out of bed for anything less than a black shirt.”_

 

_Logan wrinkled his nose as she closed the band of the watch around his wrist. “Weevil? Piz? Big Daddy? I feel like I'm trapped in a bad Southern Gothic play. Are we really married to the name ‘Big Daddy’, or…?”_

 

_Mac laughed, for the first time that afternoon, finally breaking the tension in the air. “Agent V will get a kick out of that one. He actually is her dad and he's been trying to make that nickname happen since she was a kid. She thinks it's an abuse of power but Agent K calls the shots so we’re kind of stuck with it as long as he finds it funny...even if he's the only one who does. Which he is.”_

 

_“Then I'd like to be called Admiral Moneybags.”_

 

_“Code names are no joke, Logan, we use them because we have to. If you get caught, we don't need the whole unit getting burned.”_

 

_“I would die before I would give up names,” he said, feeling irrationally angry at the implication. He'd run across a lot of resistance when he first been approached by the OSS about joining, but assumed he’d won the naysayers over. Why would they put a guy into the field whom they felt they couldn't trust? “I’m no snitch.”_

 

_She held her hands up in a mea culpa. “That wasn't an attack on your character. This is war. There are no gentleman’s agreements when it comes to outing spies. And, let me tell you, these Nazis are some nasty pieces of work. They've gotten very creative with their interrogation techniques. With enough time, they can get anybody talking. Better you can't tell what you don't know.”_

 

_His brow furrowed at her words. She made sense, and he was glad it wasn't a specific lack of trust in him that kept him in the dark, but on some level it still stung. “Good lot that rule will do to protect me. Everybody already knows who I am. I'm going in naked.”_

 

_“True. But, we couldn't get a meeting with any of these people before you fell into our laps. It's lucky for the OSS that the SS are such star fuckers.” Mac’s eyes lingered on him for a while, her expression slowly softening into a look of fraternal affection. “Your sacrifice has not gone unnoticed.”_

 

_The way Mac eschewed sentimentality, earning a comment like that from her felt bigger than a ticker tape parade._

 

_“I’m just doing my part for the war effort, same as every other able-bodied man.” Logan caught his image in the mirrored closet door and let out a shuddered breath. He reminded himself that he was wearing a costume and that this was a just role, exactly the same as every other one he'd played before. “It’s just strange not to know the scope of the mission - this feels like shooting scenes from a script out of order without knowing the whole plot of the film.”_

 

_“Even I don't know the entire mission,” she said, touching her own chest for emphasis. “Think of us as an Olympic relay team. You don't look behind you when you're running fast or you could trip yourself up. Just look ahead. Pass the baton. Trust your team. That's how you win a race.”_

 

_“You're saying you really don't know anything?” He cocked his head, eyebrow raised in disbelief._

 

_“I'm saying we all know exactly as much as we need to know to do the job we’ve been hired to do - and no more. Every operation is ‘eyes only’. It's safer that way for everybody.” She straightened his collar and took a step back to take in his final look. “We’re all just cogs in one great big machine.”_

 

_“I’m a cog?”_

 

_“You? No, Admiral Moneybags. You’re the grease that gets this whole contraption moving.”_

 

* * *

 

With its soaring, arched ceilings and mirrored walls, the opulent lobby bar at the Aveneida was still an impressive sight, even with the supply shortages. And though the establishment hadn't been able to keep the standard of upkeep it had been previously famous for, nobody ever complained. Any expectation of luxury vanished with the elimination of the French Zone Libre. People just considered it an indulgence not to be speaking German.

 

By the stroke of noon the house was usually packed, but Wednesdays were lighter than most. Crowded enough not to draw suspicion, but clear enough for the room to be controlled. 

 

Pfannmüller was still talking a wide streak, now prattling on about the Aryan beauty of Lauren Bacall in a thick Sudetenland accent. “Have you ever met her?”

 

“Once or twice.” Logan amused himself with the knowledge that at this time last year he'd actually been a guest at the woman’s Passover seder.

 

For most people who still had their humanity intact, this would be a difficult task, keeping a straight face while dining with the enemy. But Logan had spent his entire life suffering the company of loathesome individuals. 

 

He'd endured two decades living with an abject sociopath, only to be thrust unwillingly into the grasping hands of the Hollywood Studio system. With that experience under his belt, having drinks with a Nazi felt just like any other lazy afternoon. 

 

“Obrigado, Señhor Echolls.” The person who had been serving them, a barman with a glaring lack of hair and an even more obvious lack of bartending knowledge, placed a small silver tray containing the bill in front of Logan. “It is an honor to have you here with us today.”

 

The bald man caught his eye and subtly glanced at the price written at the bottom, before turning away to polish a nearby section of the hammered copper with a brown chenille rag.

 

_1,49 Escudos_

 

The number was underlined, with an erroneous comma. 

 

Logan had already figured the barkeep to be a plant, due to his spectacular inbility to mix drinks, so that had to mean the number on the bill was the time he needed to have the Nazi outside in front of the building’s entrance. Mac told him the signal would be fairly obvious.

 

  
He checked his wrist watch: _1:41pm_  

 

The OSS clearly wasn't too concerned about giving their operatives much lead time. He’d have to wrap this up quickly.

 

As he reached for his wallet to settle the bill, Pfannmüller lifted the slip of paper off the tray and glanced quickly at it. “149? You ordered Gibsons. That nincompoop brought you two martinis.”

 

Logan tried to take the bill back, but the other man held it defiantly to his chest. “Well, he charged us for two martinis, so I suppose that's fair.”

 

“No.” Pfannmüller let his free hand fall to the bar with a loud slap. “The service was dreadful. We should be compensated.”

 

  
The clock above the bar read _1:43pm_. 

 

The bartender’s hand tightened on the rag as he continued to clean, the only indication he'd been listening in. Logan would have to think of something fast if he was going to make the rendezvous on time.

 

  
He took a deep breath and forced a laugh. “You honestly expect  them  to know the difference between a Gibson and a martini? They’re barely a civilized people.”

 

Pfannmüller released the scrap of paper onto the plate as his ruddy face split into an unsettling smile. “You are quite right, Herr Echolls. We should not expect what is not within their abilities. It's only sets one up for disappointment, ja?”

 

“That's right.” Logan repressed the urge to hail another drink to wash the rising bile from his throat. “Besides, it's not like I can't afford the price difference. In fact, if you'd allow me the honor?” He pulled some change from his pocket and tossed it on the tray with an arrogant flourish. “Good company is worth a bit of a surcharge.”

 

“Danke schöen.” Pfannmüller nodded his appreciation at the crass show of wealth. “You know, Der Führer was happy to hear that a man with your notoriety and stature was a vocal supporter of the the Nazi arts council.”

 

They walked amicably past both gilded fixtures and gilded women toward the front of the room.

 

“Was he now? That certainly is flattering to hear.” Logan wordlessly signaled to the maitre’d that they were ready for their coats. “I think it's important to spread the right message to the world, especially in such uncertain times.”

 

“Well, he is a very big fan of your work,” Pfannmüller continued, “particularly der, um, Säbelrassler?” He mimed a sword fight and chuckled at his own antics.

 

“The Swashbuckler?” Logan suggested, trying hard not to be disgusted by the idea of Hitler enjoying anything he might have done to entertain people.

 

“Ja! He has seen all of the sequels.” Pfannmüller received his coat from the small Portuguese woman working the coat room, without making eye contact or speaking to her. “If you are ever in Berlin, we can organize a subversive book burning in your honor. Perhaps Kafka or Heinrich Heine? Unfortunately, we burned most of the extremist artwork in 1938 and the rest we’ve sold off in Swiss auctions to pay for the war effort. As I always say, if the Swiss want to be neutral, then let Dali corrupt their people as they pad our coffers.”

 

Logan had heard rumors of bonfires being built with priceless kindling - Picasso, Miro, Van Gogh, Chagall - but this was the first time he'd gotten verbal confirmation of it. His mother, a dedicated art buff, would've wept at the news. “A book burning? That sounds like something I might enjoy.”

 

”Wünderbar!” Pfannmüller beamed a shark-like grin.

 

Logan was beginning to see what Mac had meant when she described the Nazis as being a ‘bottomless cesspool of weird’.

 

The coat check woman handed Logan his belted canvas trench, along with a wide smile.  

 

“Obrigado.” Logan nodded, returning the smile, which earned him a slight eyebrow raise from the Nazi standing in front of him. If ingrained manners were the thing that got Logan killed one day, at least he could say he went out with class.

 

  
Logan glanced at his watch just as the minute box flipped to _1:48pm_ , then extended his arm, guiding the other man through the rotating doors and onto the sidewalk in front of the building.

 

If the guy hadn’t called gypsies vermin; if he hadn't claimed that jazz was a secret political plot by New York Jews to overthrow German culture; if he hadn't praised the burning of priceless pieces of artwork simply because they encouraged free thought and personal expression, then this could be just another stroll down the promenade.

 

But unfortunately for Pfannmüller, he was a dedicated worker toward bringing about the ideals of the Nazi cause and had made the fatal mistake of accepting a lunch invitation from a man who had a strong stomach for vengeance and a keen desire to see men who preyed on the blood of innocent people get their cummupance. 

 

After what his father did to Lilly, Logan had no mercy for violent bullies. Every moment they spent free on the streets was another life put in danger.

 

Steeling himself for the deed, Logan took a deep breath and smoothed his hands down the front of his coat. He lifted the ends of his sash belt and tied them into a double knot, pulling the second loop hard.

 

That was the signal - one knot - and it was the difference between this man living or dying. 

 

Logan followed Pfannmüller quickly, pushing through the glass turnstile, taking the first steps into his strange, new life like Alice down the rabbit hole. 

 

  
A gust of wind blinded Logan momentarily as he caught his bearings. He could do this. He _would_ do this. He'd help the government kill as many murderers as it took if it would help save lives. He may have been too late to save Lilly, but he'd never be late again.

 

His hand shook as he looked at his watch, he was exactly on time. _1:49pm_.

 

Logan pulled the gold cigarette case from his left, breast pocket and silently angled it in Pfannmüller’s direction, offering the man a final cigarette.

 

“No, thank you. I don't smoke,” Pfannmüller held his palm up, politely refusing.

 

“Probably better that way.” Logan pressed a cigarette between his lips and let it hang there for a moment, then replaced the case and pulled a pack of matches from his hip pocket. “My doctor is convinced these things will kill you.” He rolled a single match between two fingers, then scraped his thumb nail against the phosphorous end and ignited it on the first try. 

 

At that moment, a bullet tore through the skull of the man standing next to him, spattering Logan’s trench coat with blood like an expressionist painting.

 

Pfannmüller probably would’ve organized a party to watch it burn.

 

Logan let the wind take the match, then fell to his knees next to the body and did his best approximation of Munch’s ‘Scream’, as one hand lifted the dead man’s wallet and keys from his suit pocket.

 

* * *

 

By the time Logan reached Adega Machado in the Alfama section of old Lisbon, he was convinced he'd need to be airlifted out of the area. 

 

The brightly-painted buildings that lined the narrow streets of the quaint but disheveled neighborhood lurched inward due to a catastrophic earthquake that hit the city hundreds of years ago, contributing to a constant sense of vertigo. And those streets were made impossibly dizzier by a messy layout that Logan could only compare to a drunk city planner throwing a handful of pulling taffy on the floor and using it as the basis for urban development.

 

To make matters worse, it was poorly lit. Economic cutbacks from the war meant the very few electric lamps that did exist were almost never turned on. And so, Logan was just happy to have found the restaurant at all before the armistice.

 

Luckily, he could hear the place before he could see it, the rueful melody of an acoustic guitar drifting down the alleyway, accompanied by a melancholic moan that weaved its way in and out of the chords with no particular reason or direction. Like following the Pied Piper, he tracked the music to its source.

 

Whatever he found at the other end had better include a well-stocked bar.

 

After his statement to the police and an hour-long shower scrubbing the blood off his hands, Logan had spent the rest of the evening roaming the streets to clear his head. He may not have been the one to pull the trigger, but he was partially responsible for killing a man that afternoon. And despite what the newspapers had speculated about him after Lilly’s death, the idea of murdering somebody didn't sit well with him, no more than the average man.

 

But, he would still get up tomorrow and do the same thing again if he had to, conscience be damned. It's what he signed up for.

 

However, he was about to the meet the person directly responsible for Pfannmüller’s death and maybe that would put things in perspective for him? Mac told him he would rendezvous and debrief with another agent over dinner at 2100 hours. The agent would be dressed in something yellow.

 

He wasn't expecting a woman, much less a girl who looked like a teen playing dress up in her mommy’s closet. But she was the only one in the restaurant still sitting by herself - bare legs crossed at the knee, wearing a canary-colored sundress and matching yellow cardigan - it had to be her.

 

Logan assumed she was legal (if only just), but it still didn't sit right with him. The OSS had a flexible morality when it came to a lot of things, but they weren't child-peddlers. Either way, the home office was going to being getting an earful about it later. Just because the girl knew how to shoot straight didn't mean it was right for her to be taking care of hits.

 

His only hope was that she was professional enough not to bother him all night with questions about his films. The promise of equanimity was one for the reasons he'd enlisted in the first place.

 

As he ambled warily toward the table, closing the distance between them, he caught a an amused glint in her eye, as if she could almost hear what he was thinking about her and found his discomfort cute. She was patronizing him. Maybe she wasn't so young after all? 

 

He took a closer look. She wasn't wearing much makeup, and her golden-brown hair was pinned simply at the sides, falling into natural waves that cascaded just past her shoulders, like Ava Gardner. He was used to seeing more artifice on women, especially the broads in his hometown. Perhaps, that's what threw him? 

 

He reached for his Stetson at the same time she leaned forward and nudged the empty chair across from her with the ball of her foot. “Darling, you're late!”

 

The hostess turned with an outstretched hand and relieved him of his hat, then snapped her fingers, summoning a passing busboy who took immediately lifted it from her hands.

 

The woman in yellow stood up to greet Logan as he approached the table and something in her expression - something knowing - stopped him dead in his tracks. 

 

And that was it. 

 

Much like the day Lilly Kane sauntered onto his beachside set with bloodshot eyes and a cheeky grin, Logan knew this moment was important. 

 

The agent was a contradiction; she had the face of a babe, and though her bright blue eyes were vibrant and full of fire, they had lived a thousand different lifetimes, much like his own.

 

Logan swallowed dryly and forced a smile. “Just trying to be fashionable.”

 

“Don't tell me you forgot your coat again? Honestly, he'd lose his head if it weren't attached,” she said, looking on him fondly before sharing a laugh with the hostess. Her hands fell onto his biceps for leverage as she lifted herself onto her toes to press a kiss onto each of his cheeks, lips softer and warmer than they looked. 

 

“This is why man need wife,” the hostess said, playing along cordially.

 

The agents fingers slipped over the curves of his arms and grasped at his hands, sending a warm jolt through him at the feeling of her touch. “Is that the reason, Logan?”

 

“I can think of a few others,” he said, enjoying the sound of his name on her lips, and without thinking, leaned forward and bussed his mouth lightly against hers, a hint of a kiss.

 

Her eyes widened at his brazenness, but she quickly recovered. “….and yet, you’re still late to meet me.”

 

Okay, she was actually angry about this. What did she expect him to do? Show up to dinner looking like a grisly attempt at pointillism? He needed to shower and didn't realize he'd need five hours lead time and a sack of breadcrumbs to find the joint.

 

In reality, he'd probably had plenty of time to get there for their meeting, but something about actually seeing the person who helped him commit murder made it feel all the more real.

 

Logan shrugged and shot her a poor facsimile of an apologetic smile. “Sorry Pookie. Traffic was just murder.”

  
_Pookie._ That was his parole word. It was supremely embarrassing to say out loud, but it was definitely not something that would generally come up in normal conversation.

 

A slight adjustment in her expression told him she registered the code.

 

“Murder, huh?” Her fingers tightened around his and she leaned in conspiratorially. “I hope you brought me something good to make up for your tardiness, _Buster_.”

 

Buster. That was hers. They were a match.

 

“I always do.” He produced a small gift-wrapped box from his sport coat pocket - the ‘take’, a copy of the dead man’s office key and identification papers inside - and placed it in the center of her hands. “Am I forgiven?”

  
Her eyelashes fluttered as she examined the ornate box, before glancing up, forehead wrinkled. “Gift-wrapped? You really _shouldn't_ have.”

 

“Oh, I don't know. Civility may have fallen by the wayside, but I still subscribe to the William of Wyndham’s belief that manners make the the man.”

 

Her lips parted in an aborted laugh as she quickly secured the box into a straw totebag. “Then, I will save this to open later when I can thank you privately, because I have manners, too.”

 

The hostess looked between them, features pinched in confusion, then walked around them and silently dropped two menus on the burgundy tablecloth. “I come back later, señhor?”

 

“That depends on how hungry my lovely wife is?” He held the chair out for his dinner companion before taking a seat himself.

 

“Your lovely wife is always very hungry.” The agent shook out her fabric napkin and placed it on her lap. “And not very picky. Unlike some people. Would you like a Gibson, darling, or are you okay with the wine I ordered?”

 

Logan lifted a questioning brow. He knew the bar had been bugged, but he never really thought about who might be listening on the other end. 

  
“Maybe you’ll get it exactly how you want it, this time?” She smiled, and -  _Jesus Christ_  - she had the most perfect set of natural teeth he'd ever seen.

 

The hostess pulled a small spiral notebook and pencil from her apron. “You tell me.”

 

The agent was obviously referring to his drink order at the Aveneida Hotel, which he’d sent back after the bartender - who turned out to be another agent, named Weevil - made it wrong. 

 

He was perfectly within his right, since any bartender worth their salt would know that Gibsons are made with onions, not olives. Weevil should have done his research, coordinated ahead what Logan was going to drink. Pfannmüller would have been suspicious if a man like Logan hadn't noticed or commented on the wrong cocktail. “Is it really ‘picky’ to want a bartender to bring you what you ordered?”

 

“When there are soldiers eating spam rations in the Pacific theater, I think you can probably let one or two miniature onions slide, no?” She leaned forward, lips pursed for a rebuttal.

 

“There was a jar of onions sitting on the bar in front of me within reach, and considering how much they charge for a lousy Gibson there, you’d think they'd manage to include the only ingredient that actually makes it a Gibson rather than a martini.” Logan glanced at the hostess, who lowered her pad, uneasily.

 

“Everybody’s got to make sacrifices during wartime, Logan. For some, it's shoes or heat during the winter, for others, it's - you know - martini onions. I guess.” She gestured to him and smirked. 

 

“Not a martini, sweetheart, a Gibson. That's rather the point I'm trying to make, isn't it?” He smirked right back at her, sure to add the smug tilt to his lips that used to make Lilly want to throttle him. “But we all must do our part, I suppose.”

 

“I come back for your order when you're ready…” The hostess shifted nervously in place. 

 

“No, don’t!” They both shouted at the same time, startling the woman.

 

“I go.” She flashed a weak smile, then practically sprinted for the kitchen.

 

Logan watched the poor woman's retreating form and then razed his date with an accusatory glare. “Has anybody ever told you how great you are at staying inconspicuous? Seriously, you're a regular Nora Charles.”

 

He noticed the open bottle of wine on their table, poured out a glass for himself and refilled hers.

 

“Is that supposed to make you Nick? Because I'm pretty sure he’s probably man enough to drink his gin without cocktail onions.” She rolled her eyes, lifting her glass to her lips, then leaned forward in her chair as if spoiling for a fight.

 

“That's seriously your barometer for masculinity?” His face scrunched up, wondering how the hell they ended up in this conversation.

 

She pressed her fingertips to her lips in thought. “Well, I mean, can you lift heavy objects? There's also that.”

 

Logan stared at her in disbelief before throwing his napkin at her chest - which she somehow managed to catch mid-air despite being doubled over in laughter. “Where the hell did the company dig you up? Lemme guess - Mars? No wait! Neptune!”

 

Her jaw dropped abruptly and she shook her head, as if pulling herself from a reverie. “You are not what I was expecting, Logan Echolls.”

 

“What were you expecting? A dilettante?” He hadn't meant to sound so defensive, but nearly everybody he'd met insinuated the same thing, and those who hadn't, probably had never seen his movies. He couldn't really blame them, he would have probably made the same assumptions were he in their shoes, but he was tired of being prejudged. “Look, I signed up for this shitshow, and I wouldn't have done it if I weren't prepared to get my hands a little dirty.” 

 

“If you think this is getting your hands dirty, then you’re greener than I thought.” The agent paused, as if she were about to say something else, but then took a sip of wine instead. “I know why you were late tonight. You probably spent hours wandering around the city, maybe halfway down the bottle, wondering if you'd done the right thing today, questioning if you were still a good person?”

 

“Wrong. I was never a good person,” he said, a little too quickly, then drained the rest of his glass in one go. He refilled it with a shaky hand, the crimson wine sloshed over the lip of the goblet onto the white tablecloth beneath. 

 

Her head tipped to the side as she stared at his face, expression unmoved. “Telling yourself that isn't going to make this job any easier, and it's definitely not going to make it true. You wouldn't be sitting here, if it were.”

 

“Aww, is this concern? I'm flattered,” his lips quirked into a smile, “but honestly, if you're trying to scare me—”

 

“—are you scared?” Her voice sounded a little too breathless for this spiel to only be about warning a rookie agent. But, he had his own demons to chase, she was welcome to hers. 

  
“Am I scared?” Logan chuckled a little self-consciously, shrinking back slightly from the heat of her radiant stare. “I was practically born on the other side of the Rubicon, sweetheart. I wouldn't even know what it feels like  not  be just a little bit frightened by life.”

 

The faint strains of a Spanish guitar started to play, accompanied by the mournful wail of a once-beautiful, middle-aged Fado singer, her face glazed over, seized by the spirit of the song.

 

He stared intently at the other agent, feeling not a little victorious by his ability to shock her into silence.

 

The woman sat up straighter and leveled him with furrowed concern. “To have experienced so much fear that you become numb to it is a double-edged sword, Logan, I honestly - well, I don't know whether I'm sorry for you or if I'm jealous."

 

That she would feel either of those things made him physically ill.

 

“Oh my God. Don't - don't—” he grimaced, then instinctively reached across the small table with his right hand, tentatively brushing the inside of her wrist with his fingertips. “Just - let’s get really really lit tonight. Okay? Can we do that? I'll even drink my gin straight as an oblation to the war effort. Please? Can we please do that?”

  
When she tilted her chin up, the look of determination in her eyes made his breath catch in his chest. He wasn't sure yet what she wanted from him, but it was obvious she did  want . 

 

“Well, aren't you just the goddamn hero?” She quipped, her tone only halfway joking.

 

“That's me.” He took a chance, letting his fingers slide gently across her hand, waiting tentatively for a response. “They'll be writing paeans about me back home by the end of the war.”

 

“Dirty limericks count as paeans, now?” She smiled without looking up from where their hands met - his unspoken offer still unanswered - and slowly molded her palm to his. 

 

Logan sagged with relief. In Hollywood, shitting where you ate was practically part of a star’s contract rider, but none of the background extras were capable of killing him from 500 feet away. 

 

The events of the day were catching up with him, booze and exhaustion peeling back the egdes of his self-control like old wallpaper. The overwhelming need to do something reckless took hold, and before he could stop himself, he lifted her wrist to his mouth and feathered his lips against her pulse point. She exhaled harshly at the contact but didn't pull away, so he repeated the action. Her fingers still smelled of gunpowder. “Anybody ever tell you you're a giant pain in the ass?”

 

She tipped her head back and huffed out a laugh. “Only everybody who's ever met me.”

 

His teeth grazed the thin skin over her blue veins, and in a transparent attempt to hide a smile, she bit her bottom lip. 

 

“So, what's your story?” He asked, casually, as if he weren't taking more liberties with her than he was entitled to. Still, she wasn't asking him to stop...

 

“When I was 19, a modeling scout discovered me at a San Diego strip mall selling ice cream cones for five cents a pop, down by the boardwalk.” She scooted forward in her chair, and as she continued to speak, he could almost hear the smile in her voice. “Of course, I was too short to model, but central casting at Metro signed me up right away, and wouldn't you know it? My first job, I'm hired as a featured player on a shitty remake of Zorro. And that's when I saw him - Logan Echolls.” 

 

Her free hand framed his name in the air, and he let out a disgusted groan at her antics. 

 

She continued, breathlessly. “I didn't think he'd notice me, but there was this one scene where he swashed when he should have buckled, and he fell directly on top of me. A meet cute, just like in one of his movies. We were married one month later. And now we're honeymooning in romantic Lisbon during the height of a brutal war. Couldn't you just die?”

 

Mouth agape, Logan was rendered completely speechless.

 

She slowly traced the gold band on his left hand with the tip of her index finger - the one that Mac had given him to wear this evening - and grinned, the very picture of innocence. “Well, you did ask for my story.”

 

With a low scrape against the stone floor, his inched his chair closer. He leaned over, bridging the scant distance between them to whisper in her ear. “I didn't mean your cover story and you know it. Smartass.”

 

She threw her head back and laughed, flashing those perfect teeth again. “You know the rules, Logan. I can't tell you anything personal about me, for both our safety.”

 

His bottom lip pouted. “That hardly seems fair. You know everything there is to know about me. The entire world does. I'm at a disadvantage. Can't you at least answer some general questions?”

 

She rolled her head along her neck, clearly stalling for time, then finally dropped it to the side with a sigh. “Fine. But you know I'm not going to answer anything that's going to compromise national security, so don't bother.”

 

“I wouldn't dream of it.” His heart sped up, excited by the prospect of knowing this mysterious woman a little better. “So…is there a Mr. Secret Agent?”

 

Her brow pinched, seemingly puzzled by his line of questioning. “He'd have to be a pretty understanding guy to be okay with this lifestyle, don't you think?”

 

Logan look at her hand in his and gently twisted the matching gold band on her finger. “That's not a no.”

 

“No,” she huffed out a laugh. “Who the hell would want to get mixed up with me?”

 

He shrugged - the answer a green light as far as he was concerned - and took a chance, bringing her fingers to his mouth, pressing each one separately to his lips. 

 

“Next question,” he murmured against her skin when he was finished. “How'd a marginally nice girl like you end up in this line of work?”

 

“Marginally nice?” She gave him a flat look, then lightly kicked him under the table, losing her shoe in the process. But, before she could pull her leg back, he caught her foot between his thighs. Her breath hitched but expression remained stoic, not a trace of a blush. 

 

He swiped the pad of his thumb against her arch experimentally, just to watch her squirm. 

 

She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth, composure strained, but still didn't break. “Let's just say I followed in my father’s footsteps.” 

 

A shock of recognition rang through him. “Big Daddy!”

 

“Could you not?” Her face pulled a disgusted moue. “We’re about to eat.”

 

He smiled, triumphantly, and pointed at her. “You're Agent V.”

 

“And you're Captain Moneybags,” she teased, pressing her toes against his groin in retaliation. It wasn't sharp enough to hurt him, but the delicious friction she caused was almost harder to bear.

 

He was clearly overmatched.

 

“Admiral, actually. I earned that promotion, fair and square.” He said, breathing through the contact, in an effort to tamp down his arousal.

 

“I'll bet you did,” she purred, as she gently began to knead him to hardness with the ball of her foot.

 

Logan had no idea where this was going; if this was a game a sexual chicken, if she was toying with him or if this would actually lead to anything else.

 

But for the first time ever, he didn't even care what the outcome was.

 

Everything in his life before Lilly’s death had been micromanaged and focus tested, and everything after had been one long free fall into a dark abyss. This - this controlled chaos - was something he could get on board with.

 

Her head pitched to the side, contemplating him for a moment. “I’ve been meaning to tell you, you were…professional. Earlier today. I was pleasantly surprised.”

 

He couldn't deny her praise felt good. She didn't appear to be the kind of person who gave it away carelessly. “Did you think I was going to buy the farm out there?”

 

“If we’re being frank…” without pausing what she was up to under the table, she casually took a sip of wine from her glass, “I thought that might've been the whole point of you coming here.”

 

His heart stuttered at her words. If he was being honest with himself, that thought may have crossed his mind in his worst moments, but it didn't ring true. Not anymore.

 

He stilled her foot with his hand. “You thought I came here to kill myself?” He asked, barely over a whisper, as if voicing it would lend it more credibility.

 

She had the decency to look somewhat embarrassed by her accusation, but she still stood by it. “You were halfway done with the job, yourself, by the time you were recommended to the agency. Drunk and disorderly, fighting in public, driving while intoxicated…”

 

He released her foot and reached for her face instead, angling her chin up to meet his gaze. His fingers ghosted her jaw, barely touching, as if she were a ripe peach he was afraid he might bruise. “Look, I don't know who recommended me and I don't know why, but it was a lifeline, okay? I didn't take the job to end my life, I took it to save it.”

 

“I always did wonder.” She pressed her cheek into his palm, warm and solid, a satisfied look in her eyes.

 

Unable to handle the tension, Logan shot her a lopsided grin. “Or…maybe I just have a lot of anger I need to work out and figured I could do it better here without getting arrested?”

 

“Would you like to? Work that anger out?” She slowly licked her lips and he followed the motion with his eyes. “With me?”

 

Without breaking contact, Logan pulled a few coins out of his pocket and tossed them in the center of the table. “How about you, Pookie? Got some anger in there that needs working out?”

 

“Keep calling me Pookie,” she grabbed his hand eagerly and pulled herself up, “and I will be furious.”

 

* * *

 

Logan had done some strange shit in his time - some of it even when he was sober - but fucking a stranger in a dirty, dark alley of a sketchy neighborhood mere hours after murdering a man…that was a new one.

 

But then again, none of this was real. This wasn't actually him. It was just another role he was hired to play.

 

At least, that's what he planned to tell himself when the hangover wore off.

 

His trousers were around his ankles, bare ass exposed to the chilly Autumn air as he pressed into her from behind, stifling a groan into her hair.

 

The movie studio used to market him as ‘the bad boy you could bring home to your mother’. Only half of that sentiment was true. They'd greased his way out of many sticky situations that would've ruined his career, and he'd paid for those ill-advised stunts with years of indentured servitude.

 

But this wasn't Hollywood, it wasn't even the real world. This place was just a fever dream frozen in time, like a Dali clock melting into the sand.

 

The night Lilly died - Logan’s failure to save her life - it nearly killed him too. And the irony didn't escape him, that murdering a man today had been the only thing that was able to bring him back to life again.

 

A year of drugs, booze, sex and reckless fighting couldn't make him feel an ounce of what he'd felt today, as the nameless brunette in the yellow dress had led him by the hand into a nearby alley.

 

And if being with Lilly taught him anything, it had been to take first and ask questions later when it came to what was being given freely by a dangerous woman.

 

“Harder,” the agent panted, hand slapping a patch of peeling, blue paint on the wall next to her head, where she had been bracing her arms. “Sometime today, would be good.”

 

“You really are a sweet talker, aren't you?” Logan bent his knees and bracketed one hand over hers, then wrapped the other around her tiny waist, tugging her onto his lap until she bottomed out again.

 

“Shit! Yes, just like that.” Her staccato breath echoed down the quiet street they were on, which was way too residential for Logan’s comfort.

 

“Shush, you,” he whispered into the shell of her ear, thrusting into her again. “I should've figured even fucking you wouldn't get you to shut up.”

 

“If I thought fucking you was going to get me to stop making noise, then I would never have left the table with you.” She bounced down on his cock, knocking the wind out of him - probably on purpose - then turned her head and huffed out a laugh. “I'm sorry, is my responsiveness distracting you?”

 

Her back tensed as he pressed into her again, a strangled exhale working its way from her throat. It was the most beautiful sound he'd heard in months.

 

He knew nothing about her, other than that she had a perfect smile, was good with a gun, and had a spot just below her ear on the side of her neck that made her squeal like a bunny whenever he licked it.

 

So he licked it again. 

 

“Maybe some of us don't want to get arrested for being lewd and lascivious in public?”

 

She snorted. “You're worried about getting arrested for public exposure? I mean, considering what we got up to earlier—”

 

He cut her off with a thrust, and redoubled his efforts. “You’re seriously making me rethink my personal policy on ‘wet work’.” 

 

She tipped her head back and chuckled hoarsely against his cheek. “Maybe you should. You seem comfortable working wet.”

 

Logan slid his hand down the satin expanse of her bare shoulder, then brought his palm to her mouth to keep her from saying anything else.

 

A surprised noise vibrated against his chest, but his pelvis rocked hard into her body before she could protest.

 

Short puffs of air against made him think she might be struggling to breathe, but when he tried to drop his hand, she quickly cupped it with her own and held it there, shaking her head. 

 

She looked directly at him and his stomach quivered at the sight of her - face flushed and well kissed, eyes so dilated they shone black in the dim light of the street lamp, chestnut hair at the base of her neck curling with sweat.

 

Logan buried his face in the side of her neck and edged his teeth along the side of her tendon tongue pressing down firmly against her jumping pulse. Her life was in his hands, and he could end it with a simple bite. He'd made the same choice earlier today and he could make it again now.

 

She turned her face toward him and they made eye contact, then let her head fall back against his shoulder, almost daring him to do it. 

 

With his other hand now free, he slipped it under her dress and let his fingertips graze above her entrance, pinching lightly. His cock pumping into her, slick and fast, velvet over steel. And as his arm tired and fell away, he noticed his palm was completely wet and had to breathe through the urge to come. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” 

 

“God!” Her face twisted up as she clenched hard around him, head still resting on his shoulder as she groaned against his jugular.

 

He barely had time to pull out of her before he followed over the edge.

 

* * *

**A/N: So, that happened. As some of you know, I'm really insecure about writing smut, so this is an exercise in masochism for me.** **Hopefully, you're up for another chapter of it, because one is coming soon...and it's only getting dirtier from here.**

 

**There are some characters who aren't listed but WILL appear, I'm just not adding their tags yet, because I don't want to ruin the surprise. So, if you don't see your least/favorite VM character listed, they will most likely pop up somewhere.**

 

**My goal is to finish this by the end of December, because I'm starting grad school in January, so cross fingers!**

 

**What do you think so far? I'd love to hear from you.**

 

 


	2. Córdoba

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Logan becomes a double agent.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to marshmallowmore for giving this chapter a once over for spelling/punctuation mistakes. She is the reason Logan is looking out of the 'window' instead of the 'widow'.
> 
> FYI - translations for the Spanish dialogue appear at the end of the chapter.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

       

 

 

 

**CÓRDOBA**

**_Late October, 1944_ **

 

* * *

 

Five weeks passed before Logan would see Agent V again. 

 

He thought he caught a glimpse of her in Malaga a week after their encounter, smoking with some Republic types on the fire escape of an apartment complex opposite his hotel. He'd been drinking Pims on the back terrace with a British diplomat when he saw her their eyes had met. But, the afternoon sun inauspiciously burst through the clouds like a ripe marigold, blinding his vision, and by the time his vision cleared she was gone.

 

Though Logan was most comfortable living the high life, there was something to be said about spending a week in an anonymous bedsit; doing recon and whiling away his downtime playing poker with the agent assigned to babysit him. It was a welcome respite from the energy it took to keep up his repugnant alter ego. 

 

The man assigned to protect him was known to the OSS simply as ‘the Weevil’, for his ability to worm his way into any secure location. Mac claimed he was the best ‘black bag’ man in the business. Not too surprising, considering it took the federal police nearly five years and sixty heists to catch up to the guy. 

 

With a talent like that, it seemed a waste for him to spend the rest of his life rotting away in jail. The OSS seemed to agree - much to the FBI’s chagrin - and gave him a choice between stealing for the government or breaking stones up at Sing Sing. Weevil traded in his prison stripes for a jacket and tie the very next day.

 

  
Logan sat barefoot, smoking in the windowsill, one leg dangling over the edge onto the fire escape. The last, fleeting moments of dusk cast its indigo light against the roof of the moorish mosque in the distance. With Autumn coming, the days were growing shorter, but the palm fronds were still a dark, verdant green, exactly how he'd imagined they still looked back at home in Hollywood. Those trees were the only thing that reminded him of his old life.

 

Weevil was cooking dinner for them on the stove, the scent of burnt cheese drifted over to his side of the room, pulling Logan’s attention. “That smells—”

 

“—if you say ‘'like shit’, you can starve tonight, Gibson,” Weevil growled, not even bothering to look up from the pan.

 

Cooking was the other man’s contribution to their living arrangement, and he was admittedly fairly good at it. 

 

It was a deal they'd struck early on. Logan paid for their groceries and upgraded the quality of their booze from the pittance the government gave them to survive. And in exchange, Weevil kept them alive and well fed. Logan was pretty sure he had the better end of the deal.

 

Logan took one last drag off his cigarette and flicked it out the window. “I was going to say - familiar. That smells familiar.” His brow creased in thought as he tried to place where he'd smelled it before.

 

A low chuckle echoed through the room. “That's because you've had it before, asshole. I was wondering how long it was going to take you to figure it out.”

 

Logan stood up, padded across to the stove and peered into the pan. “Are those arepas?”

 

The corners of Weevil’s mouth turned up. “I told those idiots you wouldn't remember. They thought they were so clever putting us together, thought we'd be a love match. They don't get rich people at all. You guys could look at a person every day of your miserable, pampered lives and still not know them from Adam unless they got 50 grand in the bank.” He added a dash of olive oil and flipped the arepas to brown the other sides. 

 

A flash of sense memory filled Logan’s mind - he was ten and had been crying all afternoon, hiding in the walk-in pantry. His father had taken a belt to him earlier for spilling a soda on the rug. His mother was passed out in the bedroom, courtesy of a cocktail of pills and booze. It was dark by the time the family housekeeper found him, but she wiped his tears, held him through the last of his tremors and make him dinner. Arepas.

 

“Lettie.” Logan stared at the pan, mesmerized. “She had a grandson about my age. I remember her always talking about him. That was you?”

 

Weevil nodded and turned off the gas. “That was me.”

 

“I — I'm sorry. I don't remember your real name of if we've ever met, but I do remember her, of course. She was very kind to me during some times when I really needed it.” Logan was suddenly embarrassed that he never looked into what happened to her after his mother died. Things had just been so fraught back then that he was barely able to make it out of bed. 

 

“Yeah, that's her way.” Weevil angled the pan so the arepas slid out - one on each plate - and handed one to him. 

 

“Thank you.” Logan stared at the plate. “Is she —” he cleared his throat and tugged nervously at his hair, “she's doing well, I hope? Was she able to find another job? I could—”

 

“—it’s all okay.” Weevil reached for two sets of silverware in the drying rack and gestured toward the small kitchen table. “Your mother, when she - you know - well, she took good care of abuela in her will. Left her enough that she could retire and buy our house. Your mom was a good lady.” He paused for a small genuflect, punctuating the act with a kiss to the gold cross hanging from his chain.

 

Though a dyed in the wool atheist, Logan had always admired the religious. He figured it must be nice to still have the capacity to place so much faith in something. He'd been disappointed by way too many things in life to ever feel that way about anything anymore.

 

He smiled tightly, taking his seat. “I'm very happy to hear that.” It was never easy to talk about his mother with anybody, particularly with somebody who had actually known what she was really like, beyond the public image. “Please send Lettie my regards next time you're able to organize a call home.”

 

“Oh, hell no,” Weevil said, choking on his first bite of food. “That ain't gonna play with her and you know it. You're gonna have to send those regards yourself or not at all. She already threatened my ass about you, wanted me to make sure you didn't get yourself killed. So, I'm gonna need some kind of proof of life or she's gonna have my head. She said it was our responsibility to keep an eye on you for your mother.”

 

Logan swallowed down the lump forming in his throat and forced an eye roll. “Good to know everybody thinks I'm doomed for failure.” 

 

He finally bit into the arepa, closing his eyes to the first taste and the warm memories it brought with it.

 

Weevil stopped eating, held his fork mid-air, pointing it at Logan. “You haven't gotten anybody killed yet - at least, nobody that wasn't supposed to get killed - I’ll give you that. But, if you know what's good for you, you'll stay far the hell away from Little Miss Bang-Bang.”

 

“Little Miss Bang-Bang sounds like an off-Broadway musical about a Siamese hooker.” Logan kicked open the ice box with his foot and leaned over to pull two bottles of beer from the unit, then slid one across to Weevil. “Should I assume that warning wasn't just a theater recommendation?”

 

“Don't play dumb, puta.” Weevil popped the top off the beer with the edge of the table and brought it to his lips just before it foamed over. “Agent V asked to see your personnel file.”

 

“So? Maybe she wanted to wanted to know a little about the person she'd be working with? She's a professional, could be she just likes to do a thorough prep.”

 

  
“She asked for your file _after_ the job.” Weevil smirked at him before bringing the bottle to his lips again. “Her prep sounds real thorough, ese. And hey - no judgement. Once upon a time, I might've been down for some of that sweet, sweet prep, myself, but now that I know how looney she is, I can't say I'm mad I dodged that bullet.”

 

A number of possibilities blurred through Logan’s mind, which he tried to wash away with alcohol. “Doubt you could dodge one of her bullets, but that's cute.”

 

Weevil stared at him, expression halfway between horrified and repulsed. “Making a punny joke? Trying to distract me? No lie, that's exactly something she'd do. Maybe you two are a match made in hell?”

 

“I met her for dinner, gave her the take, she insulted my masculinity and that was pretty much the extent of the evening’s entertainment.” Logan shrugged, hoping that would put and end to the interrogation.

 

Weevil looked thoroughly unconvinced. “Whatever you say, chief. Just take my advice and don't get attached. Girl’s got a one track mind -- and I'm talking about the job.”

 

“What makes you think I'm even interested?”

 

  
“You ain't ask me a thing about her in a full month. Nobody has dinner with somebody like her and doesn't walk out of it with at least a few questions.” Weevil scrubbed a hand over his smoothly shaved head. “That's a good lesson for you, Gibson. Acting like you don't give a shit is just as much of a tell as looking like you care a lot. No wonder you're shit at poker.”

 

“I beat your ass last night.”

 

“Lucky hand.” 

 

Logan flicked Weevil off, sending him into a fit of laughter. 

 

“Listen man,” Weevil started, lowering his voice into something uncharacteristically soft. “This can't end well for you. She’s good people, but she is also the loaf of bread that didn't rise right.”

 

“I'm not exactly the Baker’s Pride, myself…”

 

“Agent V is on a mission, not just the one we’re on. She's looking for something, maybe someone - I don't know what - but she'll keep at it until she finds it, even if it gets her killed in the process. Don't let her take you down with her.” Weevil leaned forward on the table, expression grave. “I'm just trying to honor my promise to my abuela. I told her I'd keep you alive, okay?”

 

“I appreciate the effort, but I've got it covered.” Half of him was outraged at the notion that this man assumed he needed such sheltering, but he couldn't deny that it felt good to know there was a person left on Earth who cared whether he lived or died.

 

“That's nice, but you've met my grandma, so you know this is happening whether either of us wants it to.” Weevil shrugged and leaned back in his chair, arms crossed over his chest, smugly resolute. “Just don't make my job harder and stay away from the small, crazy spy.”

 

“How can something so tiny be so dangerous?” Logan asked, completely serious.

 

Weevil thought about it for a moment, then took a long pull of beer before answering. “All it takes is a few drops of cyanide to poison an entire well.”

 

* * *

 

Logan was having al fresco drinks with Lanzo Castillo, a prominent Andalucian composer. The man was still quite dashing for his mid-40’s, and incongruently glamorous in his crisp white suit and matching Panama hat for an afternoon sitting in a small town cafe in the aggressively plebeian Plaza de la Corredera square. 

 

With its ancient mosques, Roman architecture and Byzantine mosaics, Cordoba had always been one of Spain's great centers of tourism. Post-Civi War, it was all but empty. Not hard to see how the senseless slaughter of 10,000 people might put visitors off a place.

 

A week after the untimely death of Bertolt Pfannmüller, a man by the name of Henrik Gehrhart, from the German Ministry of Culture, contacted Logan with a proposition. Apparently, before he'd died, Pfannmüller managed to get a call in to his department, where he sang Logan’s praises, ironically anointing him a true friend of the Reich. 

 

Gehrhart, sensing an opportunity, offered Logan a chance to join the cause, to use his contacts and influence as an international movie star to bring other glitterati into the fold. He apparently admired the military marches of Lanzo Castillo - interpreting his themes of Spanish unification as a similar call to unite all Aryans, much like Hitler's love of Wagner’s Siegfried.

 

His desire was for Logan to persuade Castillo to donate some original work to the NSDAP. This was a war of culture - as he’d mentioned ad nauseum - just as much as it was a war of of steel and might.

 

Logan’s real mission, however, had been to find out which other artists had been approached by the Nazis and who remained loyal to the Allied cause.

 

Castillo glanced around the room and took a sip of Tempranillo. “I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline, Mr. Echolls. And just so you don't think I'm playing favorites, I would say the same if the British had asked.”

 

“Have they?” Logan sat forward in his chair.

 

“It's not in my best interest to divulge any conversation I may or may not have had with anyone from any country, wouldn't you agree?” Castillo leaned back and crossed his legs. “There's a reason Spain chose to stay neutral.”

 

Spain was hedging their bets, which Logan could respect as a general concept, but not when American lives were on the line. “Well, the way this war is playing out, you may not have that luxury much longer, Mr. Castillo.”

 

“Well,” Castillo smoothed down the lapels of his suit and smiled bitterly. “With Franco in command, I won't be safe here much longer anyway. Spain’s peace has proven more dangerous for me than her war, and I must soon find new home, irrespective of what happens between the Allied and Axis nations. There are some kind of men who are not welcome in this new regime.” He raised a perfectly manicured eyebrow. “Do you understand what I'm saying?”

 

“I’m not sure I do. Are you saying you were a Republican?” Logan rapped his finger against his glass twice - in three beat increments -  a signal over the wire to Weevil that the asset was potentially sympathetic to the allied cause. “Half the country was.”

 

Still, this was good news. The British, French and American governments opposed Franco’s Nationalist party, while Hitler and Mussolini supported it. If this man was a Republican, he would never work with the Nazis.

 

Castillo released a harsh laugh as a dark expression clouded his features. “Were it so simple, Mr. Echolls. I'm afraid it's much worse than that. It’s more the company I choose to keep, and the company of one I kept, in particular.”

 

Ah. So, Castillo was a homosexual. 

 

The man smiled, genuinely this time, a faraway thing. “It’s not what you're thinking…well, it's not _only_ what you're thinking.” He leaned forward and lowered his voice to a faint whisper. “I was friends with the playwright.”

 

The playwright. 

 

He could only be speaking of one person: Federico García Lorca. Famously executed in Grenada in 1936 for vocally opposing the Nationalist party, his body never recovered.

 

It was forbidden to even mention his name under Franco's regime, much less own a copy of his work.

 

Logan was relieved he could report back to the home office with 100% certainty that Castillo would not be aligning with the Germans. Not in this lifetime.

 

“I understand.” Logan reached into his pocket and pulled out a pen, then scribbled a telephone number onto a spare napkin with the following note.

 

_Call Parker Lee at United Artists._

_She is a close friend._

_She can get you work quickly._

_Tell her I sent you and she will be_

_sensitive to your visa situation._

 

He slid the napkin across the table and watched as Castillo cautiously picked it up.

 

The man looked at the small scrap of fabric like it was a lifeline and then slipped it into the inner breast pocket of his linen jacket. “You don't work for the Reich, do you, Mr. Echolls?”

 

Logan’s face fell. This was the kind of stupid, sentimental mistake that men got killed over. He'd fucked this up, and Weevil was catching every word of it.

 

Tossing a handful of pesos on the table, Logan smoothed his hand over the microphone in his lapel and walked around the table, stopping beside Castillo’s chair. “Let’s take a walk.”

 

Castillo realized his mistake immediately. “I - I won't —”

 

Logan forced the man from his seat with the weight of his gaze. “It’s a beautiful day for a walk, is it not?”

 

“Yes. Very beautiful.” The man rose slowly, eying Logan warily, demeanor contrite. 

 

They walked in silence around the perimeter of the wide, open plaza, pretending to admire the afternoon sunshine.

 

  
“Listen, pal,” Logan said, in a conversational tone behind a bright smile. “You open your mouth and breath one word of what you _think_ you know about me, and I'll put a bullet in the back of your head myself. Do you understand?”

 

Castillo took a deep breath and echoed his smile. “On my life, sir.”

  
“That’s right. It _will_ be your life.”  And mine too. Logan scrubbed a hand over his face, mind racing for a way to correct his mistake. Weevil would have his head for this. “You implied earlier I'm not the first man to approach you?”

 

“There were others, yes.” 

 

Good. This was something Logan could work with. “You said before it wasn't in your best interest to tell me who they were, but I think we both know that's no longer true.”

 

Castillo nodded his head, without hesitation. “I'll make a list.”

 

“Names, physical descriptions, affiliations, anything you can remember about them.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“And, a list of your friends as well. Those who are loyal to our side.”

 

This last request stopped the other man mid-stride. “I--I can't do that. With what you do, you must understand the need for protection.” 

 

“With what I do, I understand completely.” Logan turned to him and leveled him with a glare. “With every name you give, every piece of intel, you keep the people I work with safe. And the more of us who stay safe, the more we can keep your friends safe.”

 

“Between the last war and this one, I've often been disappointed by those I thought I could trust.” The Spaniard pressed his fingers to his temple and sighed. “But, you gave me the name of your friend, Mr. Echolls, and if you trust me enough to risk your safety to do that, I think I can risk myself to give you mine.”

 

“Good. You can call me Logan, by the way.” Logan clapped the man on the shoulder. “And, I need you to laugh like I just said something hilarious.”

 

The Spaniard tipped his head back and released a surprisingly convincing chuckle. This was clearly not his first rodeo.

 

“I don't suppose any of those friends of yours have an ‘in’ with the German government?” Logan joked, as he reached for his cigarette case and offered one to Castillo.

 

“Oh please,” Castillo said, lighting both of their cigarettes. “Yes, we have allies. Do you think there are no men of my persuasion in the SS? You'd be shocked at the lengths some officers would go to, to throw off suspicion. And anyway, those who aren't sympathetic to the cause can always be blackmailed into it.”

 

If Gehrhart had any idea how dangerous this man really was to the Nazi cause, he would've asked Logan to put a bullet in him, not ask him out to tea. He exhaled a stream of smoke, absolutely floored by this man’s gall. “That’s risky.”

 

“Anything worth its salt is risky. If it weren't, any idiot could do it.” Castillo flicked his ash on the sidewalk and took another drag. “Shall we organize a dead drop with the man listening in on the other end of your wire?”

 

“Oh no. I think we need to bring you in. You've got too much intel in that well-coiffed head of yours to just drop us a love note.” Logan couldn't stop his own smirk. “You know, I honestly can't decide yet if my birdwatcher is going to love you or hate you.”

 

“Well, maybe you can smooth the way, then. Does he love or hate you?” Castillo dropped his cigarette to the floor and stomped it out. 

 

“Probably a little of both.”

 

"Fantastic." Castillo groaned, then threw his hands in air accompanied by a few Spanish expletives under his breath. 

 

Right then, a loud popping sound caused both men to start.

 

“It came from the Northwest corner of the square,” Castillo rasped out as he pulled them both behind the nearest pillar.

 

Logan noticed a small figure, dressed in beige with a black beret covering their hair, running across the slanted, sand-colored rooftops surrounding the plaza, as agile as a bobcat. “There.”

 

Those legs. That ass. It was her. It had to be her.

 

A blood-curdling scream erupted from just through the arch of the next arcade.

 

His gaze continued to follow the figure as it climbed effortlessly over the terra cotta tiles from building to building until the roof ran out. It then scaled down three sets of terraces and dismounted onto the white stone floor of a thin alley way just across from them, landing with a loud crack. The figure remained motionless, lying there in a heap, a muffled moan escaped out before the body went totally limp.

 

A police whistle blew from just behind the next wall, pulling the attention of the tourists and townspeople. 

 

“Shit.” Logan turned to Castillo, eyes wide, as he ripped the micro-transceiver from under his shirt and placed it into the other man’s hand. “I - can you stay in the area? Someone will come find you within the next hour? I need to—” He angled his head toward the body, wincing at the unmoving form.

 

“Go.” Castillo nodded, fully understanding the situation. “We will be in touch soon, my friend.”

 

Without a backward glance, Logan took off running in the direction of the fallen figure, slipping into the alley, mercifully unnoticed.

 

The person was beginning to regain consciousness, which didn't give him much time. He quickly pulled the scarf from the figure’s face, confirming the woman’s identity. “V”

 

There was a grainy, badly bent, black and white photo of a young man wearing an overcoat - it was lying on the floor next to her hand. Logan folded it in half and slipped it into his back pocket.

 

She stirred into vague consciousness, as he hoisted her into a bridal carry. “Come on. Wrap your arms around my neck.”

 

Instead of what he asked, a firm hand closed around his throat and began to choke him.

 

“Hey!” He managed to grunt out before she completely cut off his airway.

 

Her eyes flew open, recognizing his voice, and she released her grip. “The gun,” she whispered hoarsely, gesturing to the blood-drenched revolver she had strapped into a thigh holster.

 

He tugged the entire holster free and shoved it into her messenger bag, just as the cops filled the square. “We have to get out of here. Can you walk?”

 

She put her left foot onto the ground and gingerly tried to rest her weight on it, then grimaced.

 

“Okay. We’re okay.” Logan didn't quite believe it, but he'd figure something out. He'd have to, because a crowd of people were beginning to file into the area. “Smile. Pretend you're glad to see me,” he said, lifting her back up into bridal carry and walking back out into the square.

 

Her fingers dug into his shoulders. “What the hell are you—”

 

“I said smile.” He pressed a long, passionate kiss to her lips. 

 

An old woman with a head scarf made a disappointed clucking sound then turned to a nearby police officer who had also been watching them kiss. “Este no es el momento para el romance, los recién casados. Alguien ha sido herido.”

 

Logan put on his best look of contrition. “Lo siento, señora.”

 

The old woman grumbled a bit, but seemed to soften. “Me acuerdo de este sentimiento.”

 

Despite the intimate nature of their last encounter, this was the first time Logan had actually ever kissed Agent V. He’d thought a lot about it over the last month, wishing he'd taken the chance when he had it last. 

 

“How are you even here?” Agent V looked at him with wonder, palming his cheeks, checking that he was real. “You speak Spanish?”

 

He pressed his forehead to hers for a faint moment, then pulled away, a teasing smile lighting his face. “You should know that already, since you read my file.”

 

Her mouth dropped open, cheeks flushing with embarrassment, but before she could eek out an excuse, Logan noticed a nearby cop and kissed her again.

 

“Señor, deberías llevar a tu esposa a casa, ahora.” The policeman said, rolling his eyes.

 

Logan nodded to the man and carried her out of the square as an ambulance passed them in the other direction, sirens blaring. “I hope you have a safehouse somewhere close, because this newlywed routine is only going to play for so long before it starts looking fishy.”

 

* * *

 

They didn't speak a word to each other until they were safely in the confines of Agent V’s sparsely furnished bolt hole, down Paseo de Castellana. And even then, remained silent until Logan had swept the room twice for bugs, per the agent’s great insistence.

 

He took one last look out of the window, then drew the blackout shades tightly closed and stood near her feet at the edge of the bare mattress, where he had just finished wrapping her ankle in gauze. “Are you still in much discomfort?”

 

She lifted her head a few inches, shot him a look of impatience, then fell back onto the pillow, eyes screwed tightly shut. “I think there might be some pain powder in the medicine cabinet.”

 

Without delay, Logan closed the short distance to the bathroom, rummaged through the medicine cabinet for the bottle of aspirin, and reappeared through the doorway. “Do you have a glass?” 

 

She shook her head and reached blindly for a bottle of sherry on the nightstand. “Don't need one. Just get me that bottle.” 

 

He grabbed the other bottle on the way to the bed, then perched on the side of the mattress next to her and handed her the open bottle of aspirin, which she tipped generously into her mouth. 

 

“Woah! You'll overdose at that rate.” He forcefully removed it from her grip, switching it out for the sherry. 

 

She swished the liquor around in her mouth with the powder before swallowing both down with a full body shudder. Taking another swig for good measure, she handed the bottle back before wiping the powder residue off her lips with the back of her hand. “Thank you.”

 

“Very lady like.”

 

She cut him a stern glance then began to laugh through it. “That's your line? The killing people, climbing across rooftops, being covered in blood…that's all Lana Turner territory, but chugging painkillers with cooking sherry is a turnoff for you?”

 

“I'm beginning to think nothing you could do could be a turnoff for me,” he said, very seriously, and pulled his legs up on the bed next to her so they were lying side by side. “It's very disconcerting.”

 

“How unfortunate for you.” She tried her best to look nonchalant about the compliment, but her shy smile betrayed her. Her fingers hesitated midair before reaching for his hand. “I would've been toast if you hadn't gotten me out of there when you did.”

 

“True. And you're welcome."

 

“Logan?” A brief, frustrated expression alighted Agent V’s face, before she carefully flipped onto her side toward his direction. “How did you know I’d be there?”

 

He shook his head, still staring at the crown moldings above them. “I didn’t.”

 

“Nobody sent you?”

 

  
“No. I was in the right place at the right time….or _wrong_ place, depending on what your perspective is.” He cautioned a glance at her through the corner of his eye.

 

Her skin was ashen and streaked with dirt, but the most troubling thing about her was the look of mistrust that was brewing.

 

“You were right where I fell.“ She paused mid-breath, before continuing her thought. “Seems like an awfully big coincidence though, don’t you think?”

 

He turned on his side to face her, still holding her hand. “Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence?”

 

She rolled her eyes, fingers tensing in his. “You’re not going to suggest it was fate, are you?”

 

“Lord, no.” He tucked her hand under his cheek for safe keeping. “I’ve had way too much taken from me in my life to believe in some kind of pre-ordained, grand design. No God has that sick of a sense of humor.”

 

It couldn’t be a coincidence they were both in the same square in Córdoba at the same time on separate missions. Two members in one intelligence unit didn’t accidentally blunder into each other’s jobs like that for no reason.

 

And though Logan had never met the man in person, Big Daddy never struck him as the sloppy type.

 

It was obviously planned that they should meet up, but then why not just assign him to her case in the first place?

 

Something wasn’t adding up, which Agent V sensed as well, though her mind was obviously going to darker places than his. “This just all seems very pat, no?”

 

“Who was your target?” Logan ran his index fingertip along the arch of her eyebrow, just under the ridge of her beret. There was a shallow scrape there he reminded himself to tend to later. 

 

“You know I can’t tell you that.” Her eyes searched his face for signs of…something.

 

“Come on,” he goaded. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?” It was obvious she would refuse, but he was morbidly curious to discover just how deep her suspicion of him really ran. “Or are you worried I’m a turncoat? Is that it?”

 

“No.” Something very close to panic leeched into her tone as she struggled to sit up. “Of course not.”

 

“Tell me your first name then?” He sat up to meet her. “How about just the first letter? Haven’t I earned that much from you?”

 

“Logan.” She shook her head ‘no’, like she was talking herself out of it. “Stop it.”

 

He fisted the thin bedspread they were sitting on. “You don’t trust me and we’re on the same team!”

 

“I don’t trust anybody and I have good reason not to. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re still so free with your own trust, given what I’ve read about you.”

 

“….and what have you read about me that the whole world doesn’t already know?” The cruel set of her jaw set off alarm bells inside of him, and he reflexively braced himself for what he assumed would come next.

 

“That Lilly Kane wasn’t exactly the doting fiancée she presented to her public. That she may have been dedicated to you, but that didn’t prevent her from showing half of Hollywood a good time, including your father.” V looked like she regretted it the moment the words left her mouth, but she’d already begun and she wasn’t the kind of woman to change horses mid-stream. “She was quite the accomplished liar. And you’re obviously a soft touch.”

 

Logan’s world went off-kilter for a second, ice water suddenly circulating through his veins instead of blood. He turned his head, pinching the muscle between his eyes and took a deep breath to calm his temper. “Yes, well, at least she told me her real name. At least I knew who’s parents to tell the coroner to call when they came around. If you had been killed today, I would have had to just make something up.”

 

The sound of V’s ragged breathing grew louder, filling the room.

 

By the time Logan was able to stomach looking at her again, her face was wet with tears. 

 

“I'm horrible. I’m sorry,” she whispered, choking on a silent sob. “Sometimes I think I've been doing this so long, I’ve forgotten what it's like to be a real person - or how to talk to one.”

 

He swallowed down the swell of empathy blooming in his chest. He'd always been too quick to forgive, too desperate to be loved. The tone of V’s implication may have been caustic, but it wasn't wrong. “No, you were right. I am too trusting, I made that same mistake again today on my mission. I almost blew the entire thing because, like you said, I'm a soft touch.”

 

She frowned at him quoting her own words back at her. “What happened?”

 

Logan thought back to the reckless overture he made to Castillo - giving him Parker Lee’s number - and how that had been the difference between a dry lead and the agency gaining one of their most valuable assets over the last six months. 

 

“I showed him my hand first. Not as a tactic, just…out of concern for him. I blew my cover.” He’d gambled on Castillo - a stranger, who could have been the architect of his demise - and because of that trust, Castillo gambled right back on him. “It turned out to be the only reason I secured the asset today. I guess sometimes it pays to be stupidly trusting.” 

 

She smiled at him faintly, though made no move to wipe the tears from her face, almost leaving them as a show of penance. “Why did you do it?” 

  
“I don't know.” He ran a hand through his hair and exhaled a nervous laugh. “I wasn't lying when I said I wasn't a good person back in Lisbon. I haven't always made the most humane choices. But, I'm trying to be better. I don't — I don't want to be _him_ , you know?” He shrugged, trying hard not to picture Aaron's face the last time they shared the same air, when his father smirked at him victoriously from across a crowded courtroom. “I think the best way I could get back at my dad is to be the kind of person he could never be.”

 

V grabbed Logan’s hand and took a deep breath before speaking. “I can't tell you my real name, but when I was little, my mother used to call me Ron. I don't - I haven't seen her in years, she - left us. But, you could call me that, when we’re alone. If you want. I'd like that.”

 

Logan cupped her face and kissed her, the bitter taste of aspirin and sweet sherry still lingering on her lips. “Hello, Ron.”

 

"You _are_ a soft touch," she whispered, lips still pursed as he pulled back, her pupils unfocused as she opened her eyes. “So, do you movie stars go to special schools for this kissing thing or is this more that you're selected on the basis of natural talent?”

 

The muscles in his shoulders relaxed at her change of mood. “Bit of a chicken and egg riddle, I'm afraid, but I'm sure if we really work hard at it, we could probably figure out which - came - first?” He reached over and gently pulled down the beret that had been covering her hair. A flaxen mane spilled out from underneath. “You're a blonde?”

 

Her brow creased, truly confused. “You do realize spies wear costumes sometimes, right?”

 

The hat was now crushed in his hand, but he was too dumbfounded to care. It seemed like every time he thought he had a good read on her, he learned something entirely new. She was endlessly fascinating.

 

  
An amused twitch lifted the corners of her mouth. “Oh, I get it. You have a _thing_ .”

 

“That depends.” He tossed her hat to the floor, uncaring where it landed, and lowered his gaze. “Are you a natural blonde?”

 

“Wouldn't you like to know?” She teased, letting her thighs fall open.

 

“I think we've already established that.” Logan was mindful of her injury as he pressed her down onto the mattress and stripped her khakis from her legs in one motion. “Does it still hurt?”

 

Her eyes were half lidded and heavy as she watched him strip her bare. “The booze makes the powder work faster.”

 

“I know.” 

 

He didn't want to think about how he knew that medical tidbit. Nobody wants to think about their mother when they're in bed with a beautiful woman. 

 

Lifting her sprained ankle to his lips, he pressed a gentle kiss there, earning him a soft moan. “Was that a good noise or—?”

 

“It doesn't hurt.” Ron lifted her shirt over her head - revealing a white brassiere underneath - and threw it to the floor next to her hat. “Please continue.”

 

  
“Are you ever not bossy?” He kissed his way past the bend of her knee toward the crease of her thigh, barely pausing before dragging his tongue past her opening.

 

“Holy fu—!” she bit back a shout as she began to writhe on the bed. “They teach you this at movie school, too?”

 

“Guess you're not an expert in everything, huh?” Logan murmured against her warm center, revelling in the shiver it elicited from her. He draped her legs over his shoulders and pulled her closer by her ass to get a better angle.

 

Her fingers tangled painfully in his hair as he alternated between sucking and licking her. “Oh my…fuck!” 

 

He laughed out loud at her reaction, and she responded to the slight by grinding herself into his face. “If you think that's a punishment, you're sorely mista—”

 

“Get up here now,” she hissed, pulling him up by his hair, nearly taking a chunk out in the process, “and get inside of me.”

 

She kissed him messily, licking the last traces of herself from his lips. He wasn't sure he'd ever been this turned on in his life.

 

Logan fumbled for his zipper like a schoolboy, not even bothering to take his trousers down. He pulled himself out and eagerly pushed inside of her, willing himself not to come right away. 

 

They gasped into each other's mouths at the contact, exchanging the same air.

 

Ron’s eyes glowed almost supernaturally blue in the dim light of the room. She kept them open, watching him, as he thrust up into her. 

 

Her legs curled around his thighs, pulling him closer, but she still kept him at arms length. She was cautious and hungry, like a cornered animal who hadn't eaten in weeks. That same want from the first night they met was still present, but this time there was fear there, too.

 

“I'm not going to last long,” he panted into her hair.

 

Her teeth scraped the underside of his jaw, sending a jolt of electricity directly to his cock. “Me either.”

 

His control was on a knife’s edge, the telltale quickening beginning to tighten his balls. “I - God, I'm going to—”

 

Logan pulled out just in time, spending himself on her bare stomach with a curse. “Fuck!”

 

She kissed the side of his head, holding him as he shook through his climax. “It’s okay. It's okay.”

 

“Not yet, it's not.” He lowered himself back down between her legs, then flicked his tongue against her as slipped two of his fingers inside, curling them back and forth until she started to quiver in his hands.

 

“Oh.” Her breathing picked up, it didn't take much to bring her back to the edge when she'd barely left it.

 

“Come in my mouth,” he demanded, leaving no room for argument. "Do it."

 

As if following orders, she almost immediately did - loudly - with a cry that petered off into a distressing whimper.

 

Logan wiped his chin with the back of his hand and collapsed next to her on the bed as they both struggled to catch their breath. 

 

A sudden wave of embarrassment fell over him for coming so early, he threw his forearm over his eyes. “I'm sorry about...you know.”

 

He felt the mattress shift, she had turned to face him. “Sorry for what? Giving me the best sex I've ever had?”

 

He raised his arm a bit and peeked out from under it at her, perplexed. “But, I—”

 

“You realize most men don't notice if a woman enjoys it, right?” Ron pressed her thumb to his bottom lip before dropping a chaste kiss there. “You notice a lot of things most men don't.”

 

He'd wanted to ask her what she had meant by it, but he never got the chance. 

 

By the time he woke up she was gone.

 

* * *

 

The sound of the front door slamming shut woke Logan from a dreamless slumber. He was disoriented at first, unsure of where he was, but that wasn't an unusual feeling nowadays.

 

His pants were still halfway down his thighs, dried cum still on the sheets, but he couldn't bring himself to be embarrassed, not even with the unimpressed way Weevil was looking at him.

 

“You are a goddamn idiot. You know that, right?” Weevil stood over him, hands fisted at his waist, razing him with the weight of his disappointment. 

 

Logan tucked himself back into his boxers and sat up, determined to present an unashamed front. “I don't know, I thought it was a pretty smart move at the time.”

 

“Yeah, you would.” Noticing the open bottle of sherry, Weevil grabbed it and took a swig, wincing instantly at the taste. “Too bad she doesn't have a sugar daddy to keep her in the good shit like I do.”

 

“I assume she pulled an Irish goodbye on me?” Logan looked around the room, unable to find a trace of her, other than the leftover liquor and a blank pad of paper from a Dutch hotel. He was disappointed, but not remotely surprised.

 

“That's her way.” Weevil handed the bottle to Logan and then plopped on the bed next to him, elbows leaning on his knees. “Are you Irish? Because you are one lucky motherfucker. Castillo turned out to be a goldmine.”

 

“Did he? I'll drink to that.” He lifted the bottle of sherry in a toast and took a long drag off the bottle, body clenching from the cloying aftertaste. “I know what I did was…unorthodox.”

 

Weevil cut him a look and grabbed the bottle back. “I think the word you're looking for is suicidal. But man, did it pay off in spades. Got a good name of somebody with an in to the SS. A great name. You're not going to believe the name he gave us, she's world fucking famous.”

 

Logan blinked his eyes impatiently. “You're going to actually have to give me the name, Weevil, in order for me to be impressed.”

 

Weevil licked his lips like he was about to tuck into a juicy steak. “In Germany, they still call her Karolina Bischof.”

 

“Carrie Bishop?” The sinking feeling in the pit of Logan’s stomach began to rise back up into his throat. He roughly grabbed the bottle of booze back from his friend. 

 

“She's a legend, right? Wait - you actually know her?” That little tidbit earned Logan a raised eyebrow.

 

Logan tipped the sherry down his throat, finishing it off with a stifled belch. “You might say that.”

 

Weevil's eyebrow fell, quickly getting the message. "Well, shit."

 

* * *

 

The trees that flew past the windows stretched taller and leaner the further North Logan and Weevil traveled, as the ground became more elevated and rocky. 

 

They'd switched trains at Madrid - stopping for a quick bite to eat - and then once again at La Concha, for the direct train to Paris along the Northern corridor of the Pyrenees. 

 

By the time they'd finally located their private passenger car, there was already somebody sitting there.

 

“Hey!” Weevil bobbed his head in her direction, clearly pleased with the surprise. “I was wondering when you were going to pop up.”

 

“Mac.” Logan grinned as he followed Weevil over the threshold, sliding the door closed behind them. 

 

She was one of the few people Logan knew from the agency and was genuinely happy to see another friendly face after so long out in the field.

 

“Moneybags,” she drawled, her usual sarcastic expression screwed into place as she took in his disheveled appearance. “Hmm, yesterday's hero is looking a little worse for wear.”

 

“Well, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, ‘Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy’. My tragedy was a really cheap bottle of cooking sherry and a mattress with a broken spring.” He flopped ungracefully onto the wooden bench across from her. 

 

“However do you cope?” Her expression was droll, but there was fondness beneath it, then turned to their other compatriot, head already back in the game. “Weevil, I brought your Bona fide. How do you feel about being Catalan this time?”

 

Weevil stroked his early five o’clock shadow. “Pretty fucking bad, seeing as I don't speak the language.”

 

”Great, because you're from Zaragoza.” From the small suitcase open on the seat next to her, she pulled a brown, leather pouch and handed it to him. “I assume you speak Spanish?

 

Ignoring the rhetorical question, Weevil flipped open his new passport and waggled his eyebrows at what he read there. “Enrique Coronado Gonzales. I like it. I sound classy. You got some pocket litter for me, too?”

 

“Not yet, but I’ve got some pocket litter for him.” Mac gestured to Logan, then dug through her suitcase again and produced a white paper bag with a Red Cross symbol on the front.

 

Logan was confused, there was no way he could possibly go undercover. Not in Paris, of all places. “I thought I was going in naked?”

 

“Yeah, Romeo. That's the point.” She forced the sack into his hands. “You go in naked a little too often.”

 

Inside the bag were dozens of small, round tins with ‘pro-kit’ printed in military block letters on the front. “I thought there was a latex shortage.”

 

She stared at him, humorless, like she hadn't just casually handed him several months worth of rubbers. “I'm willing to make an exception for you.”

 

Weevil, who was sitting next to Logan, peered into the bag and immediately lost his composure.

 

“Shut the fuck up, man,” Logan warned, through a tense smile. 

 

The other man tried to school his featured into neutral expression, but instead ended up looking like he was suffering from bad gas.

 

Logan shook the bag with a clatter, exasperated. “Am I being watched?”

 

Mac leaned forward, elbows on her knees. “You're an asset. Of course you're being watched. But that's not what this is about.”

 

“I'm a grown man. When I signed up for this gig, nobody mentioned anything about the OSS being a bunch of Peeping Toms.” 

 

She ruffled her hand through her hair, obviously frustrated. “Look, Agent V isn't just a coworker, she's my closest friend. She already takes too many risks, I don't need you to be another one of them.”

 

Logan wasn't sure what he was supposed to do with that new piece of information. Mac said each mission was ‘eyes only’, said nobody knew the team’s final objective, but both Weevil and Mac knew things about Ron that made Logan think his presence there might be a piece of something bigger. He suddenly felt like the only one not in on a private joke. 

 

“I had a medical workup before I came here. You know I'm,” he glanced at Weevil, who was trying and failing not to laugh into his hands, “clean.”

 

Mac clicked her tongue at Logan like an old school marm. “Please tell me I don't have to embarrass all three of us by giving you the birds and bees talk in the middle of this passenger car?”

 

Snickering erupted next to Logan, which Logan silenced with a swift body check. “I am willing to give you all the cash I have on me for this conversation to end right now. Besides, I don't even know when or if I'm going to see her again.”

 

“You will,” Mac said, not looking too thrilled about it. “Tomorrow night, at ‘Le Beau Rêve’. 2100 hours.”

 

“She's coming with me to meet with Carrie Bishop?” The prospect of being with both women in the same room sent Logan into a choking fit.

 

When Logan was 12, his best friend Dick broke his mother's Ming vase playing baseball in the house, and then Logan tried to bury it in the backyard to cover up his friend’s ‘crime’. 

 

The fact that Logan never actually dated either woman didn't stop the irrational guilt from creeping in. He still felt disloyal somehow, like some kind of cad.

 

Mac’s forehead wrinkled with concern until the coughing ceased. “No. you're meeting Miss Bishop alone. Agent V has, uh, other commitments.”

 

“At the same club? Who?”

 

“That's classified.”

 

Logan slammed his hand against the seat with a curse. “This is bullshit. I'm sorry, but it is. I know you know more than you're telling me. And considering I'm putting my ass on the line for this, I think I deserve to know what I'm walking into.”

 

Mac gestured to Weevil. “You're not walking in alone. You'll have backup.”

 

“You're unbelievable.” Logan’s hand throbbed from where it made contact with the wood. He focused on his external pain to distract from what he was feeling inside. An old tactic, but one he knew worked. “At least tell me what happened yesterday, then. What was Agent V doing at the the Plaza de la Corredera?”

 

Mac took a deep breath, then acquiesced with a curt nod. “We received last minute intel from one of our floaters that you and Lanzo were being followed. Agent V got in just this morning from Gibraltar, so we sent her over to check things out.”

 

“Did she know what my mission was or that I would even be there?”

 

“There wasn't time to explain. The man’s room turned up an arsenal, we didn't know what he had planned. We just gave her a description and pointed her in the right direction.”

 

Well, that explained Ron’s paranoid suspicion at Logan’s seemingly random presence there. “Do you know now what he had planned?”

 

  
“The identification the man had on him said he was Swiss, but the papers - they're close, but not exactly the right card stock, inelegant work.” Her nose wrinkled in distaste. “So, all that really tells us is that he's anything but Swiss. The coroner might have something for me to go off later today.”

 

“Like what?”

 

“Stomach contents. Scars. Body rituals like circumcision or tattoos. Fillings, preferably. The composition of dental amalgam differs from country to country. Once we get a nationality, that narrows the field quite a bit as far as what the objective might have been.”

 

With a hiss of air and the high-pitched scraping of metal, the train rattled to a slow stop at the first station over the border into France.

 

Mac clicked her briefcase shut and rose from her seat. “Logan, I know you're worried you've been made, but if Gehrhart suspected you were working with us, it would be far more efficient just to cut you out of the loop - or better yet - keep you for purposes of spreading disinformation to the OSS. You're much too high profile to just kill off on a hunch. Probably.” She shrugged, reached for the door handle and paused, turning back to him with a soft glimmer in her eye. “Either way. Rest assured, we'll be watching you.”

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

 TRANSLATIONS

 

_“Este no es el momento para el romance, los recién casados. Alguien ha sido herido.”_

This is not the time for romance, newlyweds. Somebody has been hurt.

 

_“Lo siento, señora.”_

I'm sorry, madame.

 

_"Me acuerdo de este sentimiento.”_

I remember this feeling.

 

_“Señor, deberías llevar a tu esposa a casa, ahora.”_

Sir, you should take your wife home, now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp - I'm embracing my smutty side and hoping for the best. I hope it's hot and not embarrassing. Definitely please let me know either way, because I definitely do not want to be the chick who has a story you like until it gets to a cringey porn scene that makes you hit the eject button in 2nd hand embarrassment!
> 
> Thank you so much for the overwhelming response so far - marshmallows are amazing! Hope you're still enjoying :)


	3. Paris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The plot thickens...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I told you I'd be back. I had a week off from grad school, so I whipped up a chapter for you. Hopefully, it will be long enough to tide you over until my next break.
> 
> Many thanks to nicemom93/Irma66 for beta-ing this monster of a chapter at breakneck speed. You are a life saver!
> 
> FYI - English translations for foreign phrases are at the bottom of the chapter, as usual. Apologies, in advance, to any French readers for mangling your language. Feel free to call out any translation mistakes.
> 
> Blanketed warning for period-appropriate terms for minorities/women/LGBT/etc.

 

* * *

 

 

**PARIS**

**_Early November_ **

 

 

Salmon-colored clouds swirled through the sky like spun sugar, cheerful and incongruous with the state of affairs below. Paris had been relatively quiet that afternoon, but the men in brown shirts—stripping the city’s resources to the bone like yesterday’s roast—always left a trail of resentment in their wake. 

 

 

A patterned knock rattled the pine door against the doorframe, a precaution Logan and Weevil took to keep Logan safe until they could be sure he wasn't in Gehrhart’s cross-hairs. Better to give fair warning before entering to avoid a chance at friendly fire.

 

“Mac wired. Said you can stop wringing your hands.” Weevil shut the door behind him and checked the lock, before collapsing heavily into an antique chair by the writing desk, his muscular frame spilling out over the delicate edges of the carved armrests. “The hitman wasn't Swiss. Turns out he was Italian. So, most likely some fascist targeting Lanzo Castillo. You’re cleared to trot that pretty mug back out in public unless otherwise notified. And, now I need a drink.”

 

Logan tossed him the steel flask of gin from his nightstand. “Italian? What did he look like?”

 

“Before or after V put a few holes in him?” After taking a long swig, Weevil dropped the flask on the desk and dug around in his back pocket, producing a grainy photo. “Red hair, blue eyes, easy to pass himself off as Swiss. Here, you can put it in your locket,” he said, handing the picture over.

 

“I suppose I should be glad I didn't get crossed off by a guy who looks like Howdy Doody.” It should have made Logan feel better to know he hadn't been made, but having his cover blown was probably an inevitability the longer he did the job. Paranoia was his new state of being. He thought of the picture he found on the ground yesterday next to Ron’s unconscious body and wondered if the man in it was an American spy, perhaps a member of the team who didn't make it. Maybe she'd be carrying around his picture, too, in a few months?

 

“You get crossed off, that's gonna be pretty low down on your list of problems. If V’s still letting you anywhere near her, you'd better show her some gratitude for nailing this guy before he got to you.”

 

“She has my utmost devotion. Which reminds me…” he crossed to his duffle and rummaged through the bag before producing the worn photograph from yesterday. “I found her unconscious in the alley after the kill and this was lying beside her. I took it for safe keeping, but I’d completely forgotten about it until just now. I assumed it was a photo of the hitman she was supposed to take out, but clearly not.” 

 

Logan handed the picture to Weevil, who appeared as confused as he was. “That don't look like Howdy Doody. That's a picture of a negro man holding one of those weird things from math class.”

 

“You went to math class?” Logan didn't think Weevil was stupid—far from it—but he loved the reaction he always got from winding him up about it.

 

“Fuck you, Gibson. I know what an abacus is,” Weevil spat out, predictably.

 

“Well then, egghead, any idea why she would be carrying this around with her?” Logan stood next to the chair, peering over Weevil’s shoulder. “Judging from the cut of his suit, I'd say it's off the rack with mediocre tailoring, but it isn't cheap. There’s an abacus —as you mentioned—so he's likely educated, certainly enough to afford a gentleman’s wardrobe….and right there, he’s standing next to a palm tree with the San Gabriels in the background, so he's probably American.”

 

Weevil shook his head, bemused. “That's some Sherlock Holmes shit right there: dandy edition.”

 

“Yuk it up, but I’m right. I’ve seen a lot of guys wear a lot of suits over the years—extras, hustlers, moneymen—you can tell a lot about a man by the way he chooses to dress himself.”

 

Weevil looked down at the thin undershirt he was currently wearing and shrugged. “Maybe it's a cover?”

 

“Maybe...” Logan reached down and flipped the paper over in Weevil’s hands. 

_W.F._

_Resident Heartbreaker_

_1942_

 

“…or maybe not. Resident Heartbreaker sound like a ghost cover to you?” Logan took the photo back and slipped it into his jacket pocket.

 

“Heartbreaker, huh? Looks like you may have some competition for your girl.”

 

“Agent V is nobody's girl—she's probably more man than both of us put together.” It may have been a joke, but Logan wasn't kidding and Weevil wasn't disagreeing either.

 

“Yeah, well, doubt that will stop you from trying.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

It was 9pm, and Le Beau Rêve was packed to the rafters. For an occupied country that had lost so much, the French still knew how to pull together a good party. The eclectic clientele included wealthy, well-dressed Europeans from surrounding neutral countries, uniformed Nazi officers, international diplomats who could move freely throughout territories and the French who had collaborated or bribed their way into a position of safety. 

 

However, rumors had been running rampant over the last six months that the Nazis on the Eastern front were running out of food and ammo, and their soldiers were either dead, injured, or fatigued. One of the benefits of the Americans entering the war so late meant they were flush with supplies, far more than England or any of the other allied countries who had been steadily bleeding troops and cash for years. 

 

The Air Force, in particular, was a great source of cautious optimism amongst the French resistance. The bombings on major targets within Germany generated hope that the stranglehold the Nazis had on her neighboring countries would soon be loosened. The forces may have been closing in, but, just as Nero had fiddled as Rome burned, the Nazis at the club looked far from nervous. 

 

After flashing his forged Swiss papers to the box office, Logan pressed through a sea of sequins and lace until he reached the long mahogany bar. He slid onto a stool at the secluded end and looked up at the stage, where they were preparing for the show. 

 

The seat on his left side was empty, and on his right was a stunning redhead in a strapless, silk number in emerald green, slit indecently up to her thigh. He allowed himself an extra moment to check out her gams and then signaled for the barman. No use getting distracted by shiny objects when he had a job to do.

 

“Vous venez souvent ici?” The woman asked, through a curtain of shiny hair.

 

“Plus souvent que je voudrais,” Logan replied, hoping his accent wouldn't give him away. With the amount of expense his father put toward his education, he never had the luxury of getting B’s in class.

 

“Je suis sûr que vous l'aimeriez ici si vous rencontriez une personne intéressante pour avoir une conversation.” She slid a tall glass in front of him, half filled with a muted sea-green liquid. “Je suis intéressant…”

 

Even speaking another language, he would have known her voice anywhere. He turned to the redhead on his right, unable to stop the stupid grin from appearing on his face. “Yes, you’re the most interesting woman I've ever met.” As Ron shifted her chair closer to him, her skirt fell to the side, flashing the entire length of her slim but toned leg. “You look…” Logan’s words trailed off, unable to complete the thought without devolving into obscenities. “Mac is officially trying to kill me, isn't she?”

 

She signaled for him to lower his voice, even though the din of conversation in the club made it almost too loud to hear yourself think. “Pretty sure she thinks you've got that angle covered on your own.”

 

“Hey, at least I'll be going out a happy man.” He leaned a little closer to her, brushing her cheek with his 5 o’ clock shadow. “What will my fans say when they find out your dress is my ‘cause of death’?”

 

Ron glanced at him, a wicked smile brimming. “That's such a line, Mr. Echolls.”

 

“Doesn't make it not true.” He wanted to kiss that smile off her face. It was the worst possible place and time to be having those kinds of thoughts.

 

“Pretty sure Mac has a thing for Rita Hayworth. Plus, the man I'm meeting thinks I'm a redhead.” She then leaned over further and took a sip from the drink Logan now had in his hand.

 

He was so distracted by a silky stretch of thigh, he hadn't realized she was drinking it until it was halfway gone. “Say, are you chasing the green fairy all night or are you planning on sharing nicely with others?”

 

“No, I’m just—” She took the glass out of his hand completely and finished the contents, then signaled for the bartender to bring two more. “Tonight, they only had absinthe or brandy. Even a swank joint like this has to ration.”

 

Her eyes darted around the room as her fingertips rapped nervously against the shiny surface of the bar. She seemed edgier than usual, not quite herself. 

 

“That's not what I meant.” Logan leaned forward and took one of her hands in his. “Everything okay?”

 

She appeared caught out at first, but suavely pivoted her look of surprise into one of flirtation. “Don't I look okay?”

 

“You look like a dish, it's just—you just don't seem the type to get embalmed when you're…,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “doing what we do.”

 

She tugged her hand out of his grasp, smile still in place. “And how would you know what type I am?”

 

“Instinct. An animal can always sniff out its own kind.”

 

She appeared as though she was gearing up for a denial, but then something in the distance caught her eye and she stiffened. “Shit. Shit. He's early.”

 

Logan followed her gaze toward a man with sandy hair trying to politely fend off a flurry of overly-fawning hat check girls. His features were masculine yet soft, the kind of accessibly handsome face everybody praised and nobody remembered. He smiled openly at the coat check girl as she relieved him of the luxurious, camel-hair coat he’d draped casually over one arm. Logan could tell the kid had never worked a long day in his life. “You talking about Daddy Warbucks over there? The dreamboat?”

 

“He wasn't supposed to be here for another half hour,” she grumbled, increasingly agitated. “Leave it to him to come early tonight after showing up late almost every time he was supposed to meet before.”

 

Logan startled at her angry tone. This wasn't just a contact, as he was lead to believe, this was personal. “Maybe he's got a good reason to be an eager beaver?” 

 

The other man’s eyes swept the room for Ron, and as he caught sight of her, his face split into a large grin. 

 

This was definitely personal.

 

Logan’s knee started to bounce until a firm hand dropped on his thigh to steady it. “Stop that, you look nervous. Also, he thinks my name is Vivienne,” she added, through a pasted-on smile, “and that I work for the Major General in charge of public outreach.”

 

“Yeah, that sounds made up.”

 

“It is made up.” She raised her hand to wave the man over. “Just play along. You know how to improvise don't you?”

 

“Sure. Improvisation is about the only thing I have formal training in.”

 

“You're a sight for sore eyes,” the man said as he arrived, eyes raking hungrily over Ron’s body.

 

“Troy, hi.” She remained seated but leaned in, allowing the man— _Troy,_ apparently—to kiss her cheek. He bent down to meet her, pressing his lips entirely too close to her mouth for Logan’s liking.

 

“I can't believe you've already arrived. I thought for sure I'd beaten you, for once.” Troy looked down at his feet, suddenly bashful. “I’ll admit I was a little nervous to see you again….considering how we left things.”

 

Ron’s jaw twitched, but she managed a friendly tone. “Bygones.”

 

“I'm happy to hear that, even if it's better than I deserve.” Troy looked visibly relieved, if a little uncertain. “I am sorry, you know.”

 

She manufactured a thoughtful expression. “In these trying times, I believe it's rather unproductive to indulge feelings like anger, don't you?”

 

“I don't deserve your forgiveness, but I'll take it,” Troy said, a hint of nostalgia behind his gaze. “You look beautiful, by the way. You always did shine brighter than any star.”

 

Logan shut his eyes to keep from rolling them.

 

“Second brightest, tonight.” She gestured toward Logan without looking at him.

 

Troy’s jaw dropped as the recognition set in. “Holy hell. Is that Logan Echolls? The movie star?”

 

Logan took Troy’s hand and gave it slightly firmer handshake than necessary. “Actually, nowadays I’m more ‘Logan Echolls, War Bondsman’ than anything else.” 

 

“The General is trying to sell war bonds to the Scandinavians,” Ron whispered to Troy. “I figured some star power might help seal the deal.”

 

“If anybody can convince a man to do something spectacularly risky, it’s you,” Troy said, brimming with approval. “That’s, well, that's real swell. It's always a pleasure to meet men who are willing to do their part for the cause.”

 

As Troy’s hands absently smoothed down his lapel, Logan wondered if the reason Troy wasn't currently enlisted was because he was F4 or simply a coward. 

 

As if hearing Logan’s thoughts, Troy quickly added, “I actually intended to enlist, but father said I could do more good this way. Men like you, Mr. Echolls—those in the thick of it—have my admiration. However, I still have a little bit of a beef with you.”

 

“You have a beef with me already?” Logan tapped the rim of his empty glass. “Usually it takes at least two drinks.”

 

“Oh, nothing serious. Just ten years of being tortured by the sight of your centerfolds nailed over my kid sister’s bed. I used to be her hero, but once that ‘Son of The Buccaneer’ film came out, I was chopped liver.” 

 

“Well, if it makes you feel any better, my high school girlfriend had my father's centerfolds nailed over her bed. Try looking at _that_ while you're attempting an awkward pass on a girl.” 

 

Ron's nose wrinkled with disgust. “If you ask me, Troy’s sister has far better taste in men than your ex.”

 

“That's appreciated, though you are contractually obligated to sweet talk me.” Logan didn't think he was still capable of blushing, but leave it to her to prove him wrong. “So, Viv, are you going to introduce me to your friend or are we going to let this get to the point of being awkward?”

 

“If I'm honest, the latter sounds more amusing to me.” Ron sighed, pretending to be put out by the request, “Logan, this is Troy Vandergraff. Troy—meet Mister Hollywood.”

 

“It's Doctor Hollywood, actually. I played an army surgeon in Great War film once.” 

 

As they were laughing at his joke, Logan tried to suss out why the name Vandergraff sounded so familiar. It took less than ten seconds for him to remember. The Vandergraff family was famous. An old, respected name on the East coast, the kind that appears on hospitals and medical school buildings. “You're not one of the—”

 

“He is,” Ron drawled, in a way that managed to sound both very impressed and totally not at all. “Disgustingly so.”

 

“I've heard great things about your family’s business.” Logan only vaguely knew what that was - something to do with drug research and development, possibly medical equipment innovation. “I assume you're an integral part of this family empire?”

 

Troy looked more uncomfortable than smug at the assumption. “Grandfather commands the pharmaceutical branch in Upstate New York. Dad runs a technology and engineering brain trust out of DC., where he negotiates supply contracts with the government, our biggest client at the moment is the U.S. army.”

 

“And what exactly do you do for the company?” Logan asked again, the other man’s evasion raising a red flag.

 

“I liaise.” Troy shut down the conversation by diverting his attention to a platinum cigarette case, which he offered up to both of them with no takers. He lifted a cigarette out for himself and closed the case, taking a moment to run his thumb over an engraving of the Vandergraff crest a few times-—like a comforting habit—before putting it away. 

 

Something was making the guy squirrelly, that was for sure.

 

“Allow me.” Logan pulled a lighter from his pocket and struck the flint.

 

Troy nodded his appreciation as he touched the tip of his cigarette to the flame. “What are we drinking tonight—looks like it's just ‘green hour’ or hooch, no? I'll get the next round.” Troy raised a finger in a fruitless bid for the barman’s attention. “Say, it got plenty crowded over the last five minutes, didn't it?”

 

“Show’s about to start.” Logan gestured to the stage, which was going through its last lighting check.

 

“Then, I suppose I’ll have to be a little more aggressive about it, won't I? Back in a jiff.” Troy walked the length of the bar - aimless as a lost kitten - as he tried to find an empty spot to tuck in.

 

The moment he was out of earshot, Logan turned to Ron and hissed, “I can't believe you actually made love to that meatball.”

 

She sucked in a breath and paused a moment to collect herself before answering. “I don't ‘make love’. That makes it sound like I’m starring in a three-hankie Bette Davis flick.”

 

“That wasn't a denial.”

 

“It wasn't a confirmation either.” She gathered the material of her skirt to cover her bare leg. “Anyway, my love life is none of your business.”

 

Logan groaned audibly at her stonewalling. “I’m sorry, are we not currently on an op? Do I not need to be fully briefed about the situation before getting tipsy with your ex-lover?”

 

She echoed his groan back to him. “You know as much as you need to, nosy Parker. Anyway, I wasn't intimate with that man.”

 

“You know, Weevil told me I have a tell when I play poker. Looks like I'm not the only one. You always take a little half breath and hold it—right before you look directly into my eyes and lie to my face. Every time.”

 

“Logan…” 

 

She opened her mouth to say more, but he cut her off with a clucking noise of disapproval. “I can see your chest rising from over here.”

 

The withering glare she shot him could have rotted fruit, but her outward expression remained as placid as a storefront mannequin's. “Fine. I was sweet on the guy. I thought he was sweet on me, too, but it was all a gambit. He was using me to—to get—he—well, he succeeded it in, anyway. And it was all my fault for being too trusting to notice the slight of hand. He was probably never even interested in me.”

 

Logan expelled a dry laugh. “I know men, and he wasn't looking at your pegs like a guy with no interest.”

 

She shrugged, then primly clasped her hands in her lap. “Maybe he wasn't. Doesn't take away from the fact that he used me.”

 

“He thinks your name is Vivienne. You sure you weren't using each other…unless that _is_ your real name?”

 

“Don’t be daft, you know it’s a cover. My dad was pretending to a Major General and I was his secretary. It was just a recon mission, nothing too sinister or covert, and what I felt for him was real. I wasn't trying to pull the wool over his eyes—not like he did to me.”

 

“Okay, Viv.” Logan glanced at Troy—who had finally gotten the barman’s attention—and tamped down the urge to punch him in his pretty face. “I'd love to have a word with him, if he's got the time.”

 

A small foot painfully collided into one of Logan's shins. “I know that look, so just stop it. He won't make much of an asset if he's missing teeth and can’t speak.”

 

“He hurt you.”

 

“He's not the first and I doubt he’ll be the last.” Her brow was deeply furrowed in thought. “He stole classified information from me while I was sleeping. And it wasn't even for something altruistic like the war effort, it was for corporate espionage. And because of that, I'm responsible for—for—important things that have gone horribly sideways, okay? And as much as it makes my skin crawl to sit next to him, this may be the only way I can make everything right again.”

 

Logan felt a great swell of pity for her in his chest. It was obvious she was still torturing herself over what had transpired with this man. “You trusted the wrong person, Ron, we've all been there. It doesn't make you bad by association.”

 

She chuckled bitterly and shook her head. “If you knew, if I could tell you what a mess I made of things, you wouldn't say that. You'd probably hate me as much as I hate myself right now.”

 

Logan dropped his hand on top of hers, which were now tightly fisted in each other. "I know a little something about hating yourself and I can tell you that road leads nowhere good."

 

Her fingers relaxed under his, and she twined them together. "That road led you here, though, didn't it?"

 

“So, it did.” Logan squeezed her fingers once, before releasing them. “For the record, he's a bigger fool than he looks, which is already fairly huge. And you don't have to do this by yourself, you know.”

 

“I do.” Her eyes flicked up to his, and she bit her lip. “Mainly because the opening act is about to start, which gives you about 30 minutes to go speak to your old girlfriend backstage before she has to play her set.”

 

Troy, awkwardly carrying three drinks, approached them, completely out of his element. “This place is really hopping.”

 

“Cheers.” Logan reached forward and grabbed his drink, “Unfortunately, I've got to hop, too. Personal business. It was interesting meeting you though, Vandergraff.”

 

“Oh,” Troy set the other drinks on the bar and reached for Logan’s hand to shake it. “Swell meeting you too, Mr. Echolls. My sister will be just incendiary over it.”

 

Logan took one last look at Ron and tore himself away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Karolina Bischof, known to American audiences as Carrie Bishop, was at one time Germany’s most famous movie star, having become famous treading the boards as a child in Berlin’s avante garde Weimar era. Her style was daring, often appearing entirely in men's clothing; she was even once rumored to have a rider on her contrast requiring studios to provide her with 24 karat gold dust to sprinkle in her hair. 

 

It was this flair for the dramatic that first captured American audience’s attention, in the film ‘Der Teufel Trug Rot’, which was shot simultaneously in English and German. She was an instant star, receiving offers from all parts of the globe. Once the war began and crew members were drafted or started mysteriously disappearing, she made the move to Hollywood. 

 

“I'm selling war bonds for the allies and performing USO shows, Logan.” Lipstick in hand, Carrie sat in front of a light ringed mirror, applying one last coat of bright red to her puckered mouth. “My days of spying on the SS are done.”

 

Logan nodded at her reflection through the mirror. “You're a good American.”

 

She set the makeup down and turned in her chair, trouser-clad legs now spread across the back of the seat. “Not yet, but I will be soon. After the war ends I'll make it official.”

 

Carrie had come a long way, from the squalor of an East Berlin slum to the heights of Tinseltown, and she'd done it on her own terms. 

 

They stared at one another in silence, measuring each other's countenance. Things between them didn't exact end on good terms. The press wasn't privy to every small break or lover’s spat Logan and Lilly had, so, to the world, his tryst with Carrie looked a lot like cheating. 

 

In reality, Lilly had been the one cheating and Carrie was simply a lost weekend, a pleasant way to forget. Still, the newspapers had a field day with it during the trial, raking them both over the coals as they elevated his father’s murder victim to sainthood. It was just a year and a half ago, but it felt like another lifetime.

 

“So, why don't you look jazzed about it, then?”

 

An undercurrent of anger and sadness shadowed her features. “Because what makes me a great American makes me a terrible German. I left my people in the hands of a madman.”

 

“It's called self-preservation. You had no choice.”

 

“We all had a choice,” she snapped, her blood red fingertips digging imprints on the leather upholstery of her chair. “We could have pushed back against the regime. Some of us did, but not enough. And now there's nobody left who is brave enough to fight back.” She pulled a packet of cigarettes from the pocket of her robe, shook one out, and tapped the end against the side of the box. Logan leaned forward to light it.

 

“That's unfortunate for those of you who tried, but the reality is that not enough of you did. The German people brought it on themselves. Those who believe in freedom should get out now and leave the others to their fate.”

 

“Yes, but you're not so stupid to think this is a possibility for everyone? Where would they go? How would they afford to live once they've left their businesses and property behind? And that's assuming Germany even lets them leave. The Jews weren't so lucky.” She closed her eyes and took a long drag off the cigarette, releasing the smoke slowly. “Regardless, when the axis forces lose, somebody still will have to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. Who will that be?”

 

Logan shrugged his shoulders; he wasn't even going to pretend to care. “That's somebody else’s problem. My job is just to make sure they lose.”

 

Carrie threw her head back and laughed broadly. “Oh, I missed your pragmatism, darling.”

 

“Enough to give me a lead?” Normally, he wouldn't mind this walk down memory lane, but his thoughts kept drifting back toward the anxious woman downstairs in the brightly colored wig. “You've still got friends in the Fatherland, don't you?”

 

“I have friends everywhere,” she said, with a dramatic hand-gesture. “What are you looking for, in particular?”

 

He rubbed his thighs through the expensive wool of his trousers as he thought. “War-profiteers? Scum like that. Any US nationals you think we should keep an eye on?”

 

“I thought that might be what you'd say.” Carrie stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray, then swung her leg over the chair and stood in one graceful motion. “There is somebody, an American Industrialist called…” Rummaging through a box in her closet, she produced a date book and read the embossed name on the cover. “Mercer Hayes. Have you heard of him?

 

A jolt of surprise shot through him. Mercer Hayes? It wasn't a name he'd heard in years, but it was one he knew well. “Better than that, we used to be friends. We went to prep school together a few years ago while my dad went through his ‘Broadway period’.” 

 

A slow smile spread across her painted lips. “Then you know he's a schwanz.”

 

Logan let loose a chuckle. “Jeez, Carrie, he step on your toes at a dance?”

 

“Worse than that. He's a no-good traitor. Selling fuel to the highest bidder, which in this case, is Deutschland.”

 

His back straightened at the news. “Are you sure that intel is legit? That's a pretty serious accusation. When Rockefeller exposed the Standard oil company deal with Germany, I thought that pretty much put the kibosh on that type of nonsense.”

 

She handed him the leather-bound date book. “It's legit.”

 

The book was heavier than it looked, and thick with gilded edges. “You'd have to be suicidal to try to sell oil to the Krauts if you wanted to ever step foot on American soil again without being hanged.”

 

“Not oil. I said fuel, I didn't specify what kind.” 

 

The fear behind her eyes was enough to make his stomach drop. “Please tell me you're talking about coal.”

 

Carrie leaned elegantly against the nearest wall, crossing her arms over her chest. “We wouldn't be having this conversation if I were. His family owns a uranium mine in French Niger, it's all in there.” She gestured to the book with her chin.

 

“And you believe he's trying to enrich it?” Ominous thoughts rushed though Logan’s mind at the news, he brushed his hand nervously though his hair in an attempt to clear them. “That's mad.”

 

“The world has gone mad. You can't tell me Russia and America aren't attempting to do the same,” she said, brow raised.

 

“Sure, but we’re the good guys.”

 

She laughed. “Today.”

 

“Look, that's…even if Mercer were selling uranium to the Germans, how would he ship it undetected? It's not exactly like moving K-rations. “

 

“That, is not my area of expertise.”

 

Logan stood up, feeling too jumpy now to stay in one place. “It would need to be done in sealed, lead containers, which would be awfully heavy to lift, and not something you'd want to risk flying or trucking across border lines in case of stray missiles or landmines. I don't know, this is definitely going to have to be corroborated before the outfit will agree to move on him. Who’s your source?”

 

“I won't name names, but trust me, he's on the side of the angels. He’s Swiss, organizes galas for various charities, and is a personal friend. He met Hayes at a fundraiser in Zurich for the Red Cross.”

 

He flipped through the book quickly, selecting a page at random to begin reading. There was a schedule with a list of dates and deliveries, and the weight of the yellowcake being sold in a separate column to the right. A company called Krupp—Germany’s largest weapons manufacturer—was listed as the buyer. “Shit. The Krupp factory is a fortress.” 

 

He flipped to the next page, and found a name that was repeated several times throughout the diary that month. _Dr. Thomas Griffith._ “You did good, songbird.”

 

“Yes, I did. And now you get to do me a favor,” she said, with the confidence of a woman used to getting her way.

 

“If this pans out, you can write your own ticket, so lay it on me.”

 

“I was able to get most of my Jewish friends in the entertainment business out of Germany at the start of the war, but there are still a few—one in particular—a director I was very close with.” She turned away from him toward the mirror, and busied herself with blending the makeup at her chin-line. “He's the man I owe my career to, and I still haven't been able to track him down. The government isn't even letting the Red Cross examine the conditions of their work camps, so it's impossible to know who is still alive and who is, well, I don't know.”

 

They'd all heard the rumors—Jews, Romani, the disabled, homosexuals, political dissenters….anyone deemed a threat to the purity of the Aryan bloodline—carted off to work camps, never to be heard from again. “Write his name down for me.”

 

She flipped over a show flier lying on her vanity and did as he asked. ”I'd like to know what’s become of him. And if he is still alive, I’m going to get him out.”

 

Logan took the card from her outstretched hand and slipped it into the inside pocket of his jacket. “I'll make sure they try their best to find him for you, okay? It's the least we can do.”

 

“Yes, it is.” 

 

Risking embarrassment, he reached forward and clamped a comforting hand onto her shoulder, which she covered with her own. “I am sorry about your friend.”

 

“You know, when they told me you were the contact I'd be meeting with, I thought they were joking.”

 

His mouth turned up in a self-deprecating smile. “A natural reaction, knowing me as you do.”

 

Carrie echoed the expression. “I used to regret what we'd had together, the attention nearly ruined my career. Part of me hated you. But now? I'm proud to call you my friend.”

 

Logan’s chest was hot, a swirl of emotion nearly burning its way through his rib cage. “That's—that's good to know.” 

 

 

* * *

 

 

By the time Logan got back to the safe house, Ron was already there. She was sitting on the bed, blonde again, his flask hanging from two fingers.

 

“I didn't expect you to beat me here.” He draped his jacket over the back of the chair and took the spot beside her on the mattress. “Everything turn out okay?”

 

“I'm not dead, so fairly okay.” She tilted her head to look at him. “And how about you? Your girlfriend is quite talented. And beautiful.”

 

“Not my girlfriend.” He couldn't tell if she was just coming down off a drink high or if there was actually something actually wrong. 

 

“Ex-girlfriend, then,” she said, with an edge of sarcasm, and brought the flask to her lips. 

 

“Never my girlfriend.” Logan took the flask from her hand and placed it on the desk. “Are you—oh, you're jealous. That's cute.”

 

She flushed with the accusation. “Hardly. Anyway, was it a social call or did you actually get anything useful from her?”

 

“And how. But, way too much to discuss, so ladies first. What did Daddy Warbucks have to contribute to the discourse? Or was he just there to ogle your legs?”

 

“Now, who’s jealous?” She kicked her shoes off and crossed her legs under her on the bed. “Troy says his father was kidnapped, claims the reason he stole my intel was because that was the price of the ransom.”

 

“Kidnapping a high-profile American citizen? That’s a lot of trouble to go to just for a couple of files. What was on them?”

 

“It’s—” she hesitated for a moment, the whirring of the gears in her mind nearly audible as she calculated what to say, “classified.”

 

“Classified,” he parroted back, with an unimpressed huff. “Look, if you want my help, I’m going to need to know what I’m working with.”

 

She sank to the lowest point on the bed, looking too tired to argue. “I can — the most I can say is that he stole a list of names, American scientists working for the government.”

 

“Scientists working for the government….on the Manhattan Project?” That was possibly the most frightening conclusion Logan could have reached, but if it were true, it could turn the tide of the war against them.

 

“I've said as much as I can.” She stretched out on her back like a cat, then nudged her foot into his thigh until he took the hint and lifted it into his lap.

 

It must've been a burden, keeping this secret to herself, for she looked visibly relieved despite what little she'd told him.

 

“Your ankle still bothering you?” Logan pressed a long line up the arch of her foot with his thumb, pulling a groan from her. 

 

“A little, though you did a pretty good job kissing it all better,” she said, her insinuating tone made sultrier with a voice husky from overuse.

 

Their situation was absurd, and he didn't even know her real name, but something about being there with her made him feel more like himself. 

 

It made it especially hard for him to disrupt the warm afterglow of a job well done, but the war was bigger than them both, and he had to ask. “Did anybody on the list disappear yet?”

 

She bit her lip and nodded, apparently too upset to speak.

 

“Fuck.” Logan didn't believe in coincidences. Uranium sales, government scientists, the picture of the man with the abacus—there had to be a connection. He was loathe to bring up the picture before, worried she might think he was prying. But now, he had a legitimate excuse. “There's something I've been meaning to give back to you, something you dropped in Córdoba.”

 

She pressed the ball of her foot in his hand, to get him to continue rubbing. “If it's that bottle of sherry by the bed, don't worry about it. It was an off year.”

 

“It was an off everything. Hang on.” He leaned forward and tugged out the picture she'd dropped from his jacket, then passed it to her. “It's….here.”

 

As she realized what he'd given her, she started to sit up again. “Oh. What makes you think this is mine?”

 

“Other than you staring at it like the ghost of Christmas Past, it fell out of your bag when you took that spill in Córdoba.”

 

Caught out, she promptly dropped the dumb act. “Thank you, Logan. I'd thought I lost it.”

 

He had been trying to work up the courage all day to ask her about the man. The way she was staring at the picture only strengthened his resolve. “Who's the Heartbreaker, if you don't mind me asking?”

 

“I do mind. It's actually—”

 

“—If you say ‘classified’ I’m going to throw myself into traffic,” he said, practically growling.

 

She snorted a laugh, covering her mouth with the back of her hand a little too late to muffle it. “It is  _unofficially_ classified, but mainly it's just personal.”

 

“Unofficially classified, huh? That sounds kosher.” Logan lifted her other foot onto his lap and began to rub it. “You know, you're really infuriating sometimes. I'm not a double agent—well, I mean, I  _am_ but I'm on your side. Our side. Jesus Christ you're the only person who reduces me to Elmer Fudd when I talk to them. My point is, Ron, you can trust me.”

 

“I want to trust you.” She rolled onto her knees to bring herself to his height and then quickly shook her head. “No, I _do_ trust you. Kind of. It's just—this—it’s—great, now you have me doing it, too.”

 

They shared a laugh at her fumbling.

 

Logan firmly cupped the side of her face. “Whatever this is has you strung tighter than a steel guitar.”

 

“I’m handling it.” She tried to pull away, but he pinned her in place with a look.

 

“Well, that's a load of horseshit and we both know it.”

 

“Why do you care so much?” She looked at him curiously, like she'd discovered a new life form and didn't know what to make of it yet.

 

“My lawyer, Cliff, says I'm a masochist.” He ran his thumb across her cheekbone and finally let out the breath he'd been holding. “Why do you think?”

 

“Logan, I’m dangerous. This,” she gestured emphatically between them, “is dangerous.”

 

She was trying to protect him, but it wasn't clear from what. 

 

“We’re standing in the middle of a war zone. Our job is to trick Nazis. We’re living on borrowed time. What the hell is the difference?” Logan rolled onto his feet to create some distance. “You want me to kiss you. You've been thinking about it all night.”

 

Her eyes were begging for him to understand, to stop asking questions, but her body was betraying her, unconsciously angling toward him like a flower to the sun. “For me, this just stress relief.”

 

“Stress relief, huh?” Logan closed the space between them and brushed the back of his knuckles down the length of her jaw, letting his thumb settle into the hollow of her neck. “Then why do you still look  _so_ tense?” 

 

Time stopped for a moment, the air between grew thick and heavy with possibility. All other sounds faded as the rattle of shallow breathing filled the room. Her cheeks were flushed and eyes dark and dilated, no longer the color of cornflowers. 

 

He wanted to kiss her, but he wouldn't make the first move, not after she'd just told him she was using him. 

 

Ron’s eyes dropped to his lips and she smirked. “What the hell are you waiting f—”

 

He leaned forward and kissed her roughly, his fingers stretched around her neck. She gasped into his mouth, grabbing at his hair with both hands, pulling him close.

 

“Is this what you wanted?” he asked, nipping harshly at her bottom lip. “Is this what you need?” 

 

“I—” She pulled herself up and tried to answer him with a kiss, but he jerked away from it. 

 

“When you were with Vandergraff earlier, I thought about touching you, right there at the bar in front of him.” Bypassing the slit of her dress, he cupped her between her thighs and gently rocked the heel of his palm against her until she moaned. Her fingers twisted more painfully into his hair. “I wonder if he would’ve noticed me sliding my hand underneath that goddamn indecent dress…”

 

Ron squeezed her eyes shut and attempted to kiss him again, but he held her off. “You're a professional liar, but I know the truth.” Her eyes were wide with arousal, but also a hint of fear, as he pulled her underwear to the side and slid two fingers into her slowly. “Fuck, you're wet.”

 

She exhaled harshly at the contact, but when he kept his fingers still, she made a frustrated noise and attempted to thrust into his unmoving hand. They locked onto each other's gaze, in a standoff, neither taking things further. His fingers curled inside of her achingly slow, just enough to speed up her breathing, then stopped. 

 

“Fuck you.” She whispered into his mouth, frustration leaking through her normally cool demeanor.

 

“I know that's what you'd like, but…” Logan leaned forward and pressed his lips against the stretch of velvet behind her ear, fingers sinking deeper into her with the movement. She shivered as he curled his fingers once more. “This means something. I mean something —to you—this isn't just in my hea—”

 

“—yes,” she snapped, body wincing at her words like they cost her dearly. Defeated, her head dropped back, exposing the long, delicate line of her throat, and she repeated the word like a prayer. “Yes.”

 

He sank to his knees in front of her, like a priest at the altar.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Everything was different this time. When he woke up, she was still there, pale legs tangled in the sheets as she stared at the photograph he'd returned to her earlier. She was so beautiful in her tranquility and he didn't want to disturb that, but he longed to map her skin with his lips again.

 

She knew he was awake now, he could tell by the slow smile that began to tug at the corners of her mouth. He leaned over and kissed her shoulder once, then again, and again, until she turned her head and caught his lips with her own. 

 

Ron turned back to the picture and traced the man's features with her index finger. “This is my brother, Wallace.”

 

Logan angled his head, unsure of what he'd just heard. “Your — I thought only _they_ could call each other ‘brother’?”

 

Her full, throaty laugh echoed off the crown mouldings of the tiny flat. “No, Logan. He's my actual brother. Not legally, but we were raised that way. My father and his mother are….well, not exactly married, but—”

 

“Oh.” It wasn't what Logan was expecting at all. He had seen all sorts of affairs in Hollywood—homosexual, interracial, non-monogamous - and even though they weren't wrong and fairly commonplace amongst those who had the freedom and money to do so, they were illegal and could be a career killer if exposed. It was the kind of thing one only did behind closed doors or in trusted places, the kind of thing studios paid big money to cover up. For a person to make a home with someone they loved—despite it being against the law—that took conviction. “It can't be easy for them.”

 

“It’s not.” Ron shook her head, “but Alicia is more a mother to me than my own. They lived in the house next door. Dad worked in law enforcement, people in his precinct got wind of our home situation and tried to make it difficult for him, but we had separate houses and plausible deniability. As long as his arrest rate was good, we figured nobody would push.” 

 

“Lemme guess, somebody pushed?” Logan gestured to the photograph, still in Ron’s hand. “Is that the only picture you have of your brother?”

 

“No.” She leaned across to the nightstand and propped the photo up against the alarm clock, “But, it's the only one I have with me here.”

 

“Is he enlisted?” A thread of worry tugged at the back of his mind. “He’s not—?”

 

“—don't know.” She shrugged, abruptly cutting off his question. “He was more recruited for his skill set, so he wasn’t at The Front.”

 

“Are you looking for him? Weevil said you were on some kind of quest.”

 

She turned on her side to face him, expression filled with mirth. “Weevil did not use the word ‘quest’.”

 

“No. He actually used the phrase ‘hero’s journey’.” Logan dropped onto his back, head resting on top of his folded arms.

 

Ron slithered into the space left under his arm and rested her chin on his chest. “You’re softer than you look.”

 

“Yeah? Well, you're a hard nut to crack.”

 

“That's the trouble with you men,” she said, kissing her way across his chest, “always trying to break the things you can't work out.”

 

“I don't want to break you, Ron.” Logan tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear. “I’d just like to penetrate that hard outer-shell.”

 

She licked her lips and fought back a grin. “You already have penetrated me, Logan, several times.”

 

“Even your terrible puns won't save you from this conversation.” An exasperated smile lit up his face. He longed to keep her here just like this—warm, happy, the weight of the war far from her mind—but this moment of peace was as fleeting as their time together. “I just want to help you, if you’ll let me.”

 

Ron carded her fingers through his messy hair, attempting to straighten it. “You are helping me. Being here, doing your job, that's helping.”

 

“You're in trouble.” He shrugged off her grooming and gently swatted her hand away. 

 

She straddled his hips and pinned his arms in place. “I’m. Not. Your. Assignment.” 

 

He blinked up at her, and took a deep breath before shattering their brief moment of calm. “Was Wallace’s name on that list that Vandergraff stole from you?”

 

Ron’s jaw dropped, clearly caught off guard. “How—how do you know this?” Her eyes surveyed his face, tightening with apprehension. 

 

“He's holding an abacus, in the picture. Not something a regular adult – who doesn’t work in math or science - just walks around with. The fallout from the thing with Vandergraff seemed painful to you, not just like another botched job. I just put two and two together.”

 

“I gave that abacus to him after he completed his doctorate in physics. He had one like it in his room when we were kids, we used to knock the beads together under the table during dinner to drive our parents crazy.” Her features softened as she recalled the anecdote. “The government recruited him a week after that. And yes, he was on the list. So, now you know how badly I messed up. How I let down my family.”

 

“You could never let your family down.”

 

“You don't even know me,” she said, uncharacteristically bashful. 

 

He reached up and smoothed her hair back from her face. “I know enough.”

 

She stared at him for a moment, as if she couldn't quite believe he was real, then averted her gaze. “I really should go.”

 

“Stay a little longer.” His hands trailed down over her curves and rested on her hips, thumbs drawing slow circles on bare skin. “Come on, five more minutes?”

 

A fingertip trailed through the thatch of hair in the center of his chest. “You've got four.”

 

 

* * *

* * *

 

 

TRANSLATIONS 

 

 

_“Vous venez souvent ici?”_

"You come here often?" 

 

_“Plus souvent que je voudrais.”_

"More often than not."  

 

_“Je suis sûr que vous l'aimeriez ici si vous rencontriez une personne intéressante pour avoir une conversation.”_

 "I'm sure you'd like it here if you met an interesting person to have a conversation with."

 

_“Je suis intéressant…”_

"I am interesting…"

 

_"Schwanz"_

"a prick"

 

 

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for sticking with this story! I know it can be a drag to have so much time between chapters, but I promise I won't abandon the fic and I'll try to continue with these large chapters to make the wait worthwhile.
> 
> If you have time to comment, I'd love to hear what you think!
> 
> 11/9 UPDATE: Finished writing the next chapter - just need to find time to edit and will post :)


	4. Riva del Garda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A new woman enters Logan's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I know I promised to be back a lot earlier than this, but my personal life has taken a pretty huge hit (recently separated from my husband) and I've been busy dealing with the aftermath of that. 
> 
> My new semester of grad school started today, so I wanted to get this chapter out to you before things got too busy. Really hoping it doesn't take as long to get you the next one!
> 
> Many thanks to nicemom93/Irma66 for doing a fantastic beta on this chapter and keeping my blocking straight for me!

* * *

 

 

**RIVA DEL GARDA**

_**Early** **November,** **1944**_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Logan stretched his legs across the galley of the train cabin, brushing them up against Ron’s to get her attention. They’d been on this train longer than he could remember, and the unseasonably hot weather only made it worse by leaving him lethargic, muddling the passage of time.

 

Ron refused to look at him - _which Logan knew he had no right to pout about_ \- opting instead to give Mac her undivided attention.

 

“This mission is out of scope,” Mac explained, forehead creased with something resembling guilt. She looked uncomfortable to Logan, for possibly the first time ever.

 

Agent V, a picture of innocence in a Red Cross relief worker’s guise, zeroed in on this phrase as if it were a warning siren. “Define ‘out of scope’.”

 

Mac shifted in her chair, avoiding eye contact. “Big Daddy wants…well, we can't legally require Logan to do what we're asking, but we _are_ asking.”

 

Ron crossed her arms angrily across her chest, clearly aware of the hidden meaning of Mac’s speech, and glowered at her friend. “You shouldn’t. It’s not right.”

 

“It’s not something you haven’t done for the cause,” Mac met Ron’s eyes and then glanced at Weevil. “Either of you.”

 

Ron’s skin flushed and her eyes dropped to her hands as she worried her bottom lip. “We always can get somebody else.”

 

“Oh, you've got another handsome celebrity lined up for us, then? Errol Flynn, Jr. free?” Mac snapped, impatiently. “Logan’s a big boy, I think he can make this decision for himself.”

 

A niggling dread encroached Logan’s thoughts, finally pushing him to speak. “Am I being ordered to…are you asking me to play grab ass with this girl?”

 

He purposely chose the crassest expression he could use in mixed company. If Mac was going to ask him to whore himself out, he wouldn’t let her hide behind any euphemisms.

 

Mac stared flatly at him for a moment before speaking. “You don’t have to—we’re just asking you to romance her, okay?”

 

“Define romance,” Ron challenged.

 

Mac looked to Weevil for help.

 

“No way,” he said, lifting his hands in the hair. “I know better than to get in the middle of a lover’s quarrel.”

 

“That’s not what this is about, Weevil!” Ron’s head snapped in his direction. “Logan isn’t an official field agent, he’s an asset. He didn’t sign up for this when he agreed to take the job. This has nothing to do with…this is not about…it’s not what you think.” She let out a puff of air and sulked into her chair with a scowl.

 

“Yeah.” Weevil fought back a smile. “Clearly.”

 

Logan was hopeful Weevil’s insinuation was right, but Ron was principled. It was entirely possible she’d fight this vociferously on anyone’s behalf. It gave him a warm feeling to think she was being territorial, but it still didn’t stop the facts. Tom Griffith was a dangerous man, and Logan’s mission was to stop him, it’s not like he hadn’t slept with women for much less altruistic reasons.

 

Logan cleared his throat. “I could take it as far as I wanted to though, right? As long as I don’t blow my cover?” He suppressed the urge to wince as Ron’s vexed gaze practically burned a hole in the side of his head.

 

“You’re in the driver’s seat,” Mac said, quick to reassure him.

 

Logan stroked his chin, pretending to deliberate a bit longer. “What if she's a dog? Would that qualify me for hazard pay?”

 

Mac snorted a laugh. “I’m just going to mark you down as ‘mission accepted’.” She scribbled something on a form, then capped her pen. “For the record, the photos were taken from far away, but from what surveillance gave us the mark looked…relatively attractive.”

 

Ron’s head tipped back as she groaned at the ceiling. “If we’re done hammering out the details of Logan making love to a _civilian_ ,” she said, sneering the word like a slur, “I’d like to please move on from this topic.”

 

Logan chanced a look at Ron, whose features were now carefully schooled into a neutral expression and tried to break the tension. “I think it only qualifies as making love when you’re not getting paid for it, doll.”

 

The joke missed its landing by a mile, prompting an irritated look.

 

Logan let out a nervous chuckle. “Watch out, V. Glaring means caring.”

 

“Quit while you’re behind, show pony,” Weevil spat out, shaking his head.

 

Mac snapped open her briefcase and pulled out three document packets. She handed the first set to Ron. “Here are your bona fides. You're Veronica Echolls, Logan's second cousin on his father’s side.”

 

Ron’s eyebrows climbed as she read the name on the passport. “Veronica? Mac, seriously?”

 

Mac looked positively delighted with herself. “What? Don't you like it? I think ‘Veronica Echolls’ sounds a bit glamorous myself.”

 

Ron pressed her lips together and stared at Mac, initiating a heated wordless exchange, but Mac didn’t break. 

 

Logan looked between the women, confused. He was obviously missing some big disagreement between them that they weren’t sharing. Either way, he couldn’t deny the inner caveman in him enjoyed the thought of her taking his last name. It was a fleeting, stupid thought, he knew. It wasn’t the direction this thing with them would ever head.

 

Leaning forward, he rested a comforting hand on Ron’s knee and lightly tapped. “Agent Vee for Veronica. I like it. Strangely enough, you do actually look like a Veronica.”

 

Her head jerked up, an unreadable expression on her face. “I do?”

 

“Well,” Mac said, interrupting the moment, “you'd better get used to calling her that because you might be on this assignment for a while. Maybe you should start now, just for practice?” Mac loudly closed her case and handed Weevil his envelope. “You’ll just keep using your existing cover as Logan’s Spanish driver and bodyguard, and—” she turned to Logan and handed him the last envelope, “—you'll just be…boring old you.”

 

“Gee, I hope I don’t bungle my cover.” Logan peeked inside his envelope; there were several photos of his mark along with her background information. 

 

Mac left her seat just as the train ground to a halt at the last stop on the border between Switzerland and Italy. “Well, you all know your assignments. This is an important one, so…don’t muck it up.” She left the compartment without further comment.

 

Ron stood up and brushed past Logan to put her ID documents in the zippered compartment of her leather valet. He brought his hands to her hips to steady her from the movement of the train and she frowned at him, so he removed them apologetically.

 

He’d been itching to get his hands on her ever since she’d walked on the train wearing a nurse’s uniform. Logan was aware it was a cliché sexual fantasy, but he wasn’t above having those from time to time, especially when it was her. “Are you mad at me? About—“

 

“—no. Why would I be mad? We’re all professionals here, right?” She sat primly on the edge of her chair.

 

Weevil didn’t bother to hide his laughter. “Yeah, you seem totally fine with it, V.”

 

She glared him into silence. “I’m concerned about safety, okay? Not his libido. We’ve all had to do unpleasant… _things_ for the cause, but not with the daughters of possible war criminals.”

 

With a nod, Weevil let it go. “He’ll be okay. I’ve got his back.”

 

It didn’t matter to Logan if Ron was angry out of jealousy or protectiveness, it just mattered that she cared. “I know I can be impulsive, I won’t take any outright stupid chances, V. I promise.”

 

Her shoulders sagged with what Logan assumed was relief and she shot him a small, tender smile. “I’ll hold you to that.”

 

Logan’s attention was drawn, once again, to her nurse’s uniform. He brought his hands to his nose and pretended to sneeze.

 

Ron turned to him and whispered, “Bless you.”

 

Logan caught her eye, then cupped his hand over his mouth and deliberately coughed.

 

The moment she realized what he was doing, her face lit up with a smirk. “Logan, are you trying to play doctor with me?”

 

“I’m not gonna lie, this getup ticks off a _lot_ of boxes for me.” He expelled another wracking, fake cough.

 

“This outfit really gets you going, huh?” She brought her fingers to her lips, pensively. “I'll bet you wouldn't be near as turned on by it if I took out my syringe and gave you a big prick.”

 

“Or…” Logan leaned across the aisle and rested his hands on her knees. “I could just give you a big prick? I think you'd like that better. I know I sure as hell would.”

 

“Great. Now, I’m the one who’s sick.” Weevil grabbed his coat and abruptly rose from his seat. “Y’all are like stray cats.”

 

Logan tuts. “Who’s a delicate flower?”

 

Weevil wrenched open their cabin door and shot them both a dirty look. “You two have driven me to drink.”

 

As the door slid shut, Ron and Logan broke down laughing.

 

With a dirty grin, he pretended to wipe a bead of sweat from his brow. “I think I may have a fever. Do I feel hot to you, Ron?”

 

She looked like she was about to smile, then bit her bottom lip to will it away. “You’re certainly very affected by this disguise for a man who wears costumes for a living.”

 

“I don't have legs like yours.” Taking advantage of her good humor, he reached across the aisle and inched up her skirt, letting his fingers brush the inside of her thigh.. 

 

“You don't have such bad legs, yourself,” she said, with a wink. The force of the train pulling into the station pitched her forward into his hand, and a heavy breath left her lungs.

 

He was committed to the war cause, to performing his duty as an enlisted man…but the heat of her skin through a thin layer of cotton was almost enough to make him forget the mission. He understood what she meant now when she said this thing between them would be a distraction. That didn’t mean he had the willpower to give her up. “Maybe we should ‘get off’ at the next stop?”

 

She rolled her eyes and leaned forward to kiss him. Just as her lips met his, a commotion erupted in the galley outside their door and they leaped apart like teenagers caught necking under the gym bleachers. 

 

He growled out a frustrated noise and leaned back in his chair. “As if I didn’t already hate this war enough…”

 

“Don’t look so sad, you’ll be seeing this outfit plenty over the next few weeks.” She quickly fastened a small pistol into her thigh holster, then donned the fitted blazer that was draped over her armrest and arranged the line of the jacket to cover the conspicuous lump. “God, you have no idea how difficult it is to find good places to hide these things in girl clothes. Sorry to ruin the look you were enjoying so much.”

 

“Yeah, you’ve ruined everything, because knowing you’ve got a piece under there now is not sexier in every way imaginable,” he grumbled, under his breath.

 

“Your mark works in triage, too,” she whispered, eyes darting furtively to the door. “Maybe she can wear her whites for you sometime?”

 

He shot her an unimpressed look and whispered back, “Yeah, rumor has it, she’s ‘relatively attractive’ from very, very far away.”

 

“Well, she’s blonde, so that should be right in your wheelhouse.” Ron busied herself with straightening the silhouette of her skirt. To a stranger, she may have appeared casual, but the firm line of her mouth gave away her true mood.

 

Logan grinned. “Is this jealousy?”

 

“Sure,” she said sweetly, eyes flashing when they met his. “Doesn’t everybody wish they could be taking one for the team?”

 

“Ron—.”

 

“You seem insecure? Do you need me to be jealous?” she volleyed back at him.

 

The noise outside grew louder and she gestured for him to quiet down.

 

The door slid open with a rattle and a young, blonde woman stepped into the cabin. She was holding a heavy bag, which she wrestled awkwardly through the doorway. Stopping for a moment, she blew a stray hair out of her pretty face and then dropped the bag to the ground, opting to kick it across the floor with her foot, instead. 

 

Logan quickly leaped to his feet and retrieved the bag for her, effortlessly lifting it to the rack above.

 

“Oh! Thank you. Do you think it’s safe up there?” she asked, eyeing it warily, her arms extended upward as if willing it with her mind not to fall. “It’s pretty heavy. To be honest, I feel like kind of a heel bringing so many clothes with me to the Front, but I just didn’t know what the weather would be like…” 

 

Before Logan could answer, her attention was stolen by a distinguished-looking man in his late 40’s, struggling to pull his own bag through.

 

“How is this a first-class cabin?” he grumbled, pulling in two oversized cases behind him. “This is as bad as Indochina.”

 

Logan wordlessly took one of the man’s bags and hoisted it to the rack next to the girl’s. 

 

“Cheers for that, son.” He nodded in Logan’s direction without looking up as he dealt with his other bag. 

 

The woman rested her hands on her hips, shaking her head with bemusement. “I don’t know what you have in those cases, daddy, but you’re worse than I am. I’m surprised you haven’t thrown your back out yet.” 

 

“Not this again…” Her father sighed.

 

Hannah Griffith was far more attractive than those far away snapshots Mac gave him would have suggested. She had the bright, open face of someone who hadn’t experienced the true casualties of war. She may have looked like Lana Turner, but she leaked positivity like Doris Day. Logan breathed a sigh of relief knowing this job wouldn’t be the slog he had been dreading. 

 

He stole a glance at Agent V - _Veronica now,_ he reminded himself - who seemed to be actively cataloging the scene with her eyes. 

 

As genuine as Hannah appeared, Dr. Tom Griffith was a jumble of contradictions. His movements were deliberate and stiff, eyes calculating and cold, but as his daughter smoothed her hands down the front of his rumpled lapel, he rewarded her with a warm, genuine smile. 

 

“Leave it, sweetheart.” Griffith removed his hat and brushed a sandy lock of hair out of his face, then quickly grabbed the luggage rack with his free hand to keep himself balanced as the train lurched out of the station. “It’s nothing a hot iron can’t fix. Have a seat before you fall over.”

 

Hannah sighed and reluctantly released her father’s coat, then took the seat next to Logan’s. “Why on God’s green Earth is Italy so unseasonably warm and humid in November? It’s only going to encourage an earlier spread of the influenza virus and we sure don’t need that.” She brushed up the frizzy, stray hairs that had escaped her crocheted snood and pinned them back in place. “I’m sorry,” she said to nobody in particular, “I’m always a grump when I travel.”

 

A gasp broke the silence of the car as Hannah’s eyes finally landed on Logan. “You're you!” she exclaimed, half-horrified, as her hands flew to her mouth. 

 

Dr. Griffith turned toward the commotion and sighed wearily. “You’re not another one of Hannah's Miami Beach admirers, are you?”

 

"Daddy!” she bleated, looking mortified. “This is Logan Echolls!” She paused for a moment, suddenly unsure, and turned back to Logan. “You are really him, right? If you're not, I might just have to throw myself from this moving train before I die of embarrassment.”

 

“Saving a life is a lot of pressure to put on a guy.” Logan’s eyes softened in her direction. He wouldn’t have to dig deep to pretend to like Hannah Griffith. She was positively adorable, definitely somebody he would've taken home with him in a heartbeat during his single days. 

 

He reluctantly reminded himself he still technically was single.

 

Veronica cleared her throat, sharply, as if reading his mind.

 

“Oh god.” Hannah squeezed her eyes shut with embarrassment, her fingers nervously fingering the front pleats on her white suit. “If you wouldn't mind just popping that window open, I'd like to throw myself on the tracks now.”

 

Dr. Griffith rolled his eyes. “You'll have to excuse my daughter; she spent a lot of time volunteering in triage yesterday and I think the sun may have cooked her brain.”

 

“I'm not addled,” she hissed under her breath, cheeks beginning to stain pink. “Just deeply, _deeply_ humiliated.”

 

Griffiths held his hands up in surrender.

 

Logan felt a little bad for her, but she looked very cute in her discomfort so he was loathed to put an end to it.

 

Ron, on the other hand, had apparently had enough of the charade. She crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. “Will you please put this poor girl out of her misery, already?”

 

Logan relented, extending his hand toward Hannah. “You're not addled; I am who you think.”

 

Hannah’s expression took a journey from disbelief to elation. In her enthusiasm to shake his hand, she slipped forward off her chair, prompting Logan to grab her by the waist to prevent her from falling. 

 

Hannah’s cheeks turned an even deeper shade of scarlet. “Yeah, so…this is not exactly the first impression I usually aim for.”

 

“No?” He smiled at her, hoping to put her at ease, as he shifted her back into her chair.

 

“I’m Hannah Griffiths. This is my father, Dr. Tom Griffiths. You have no idea how pleased I am to meet you. I might just be your biggest fan.”

 

“Oh, I doubt that very much,” Veronica said, in a droll off-handed way. “At least, not as long as Logan has breath left in his body.”

 

Hannah giggled and reached her hand out to greet Veronica. “I'm Hannah. Are you Mr. Echolls’—”

 

“—I'm Logan's cousin, Veronica Echolls,” she said, taking the girl’s hand in hers.

 

Hearing Ron call herself an Echolls did something funny to Logan’s stomach.

 

“Oh,” Hannah said, badly disguising her relief. She gestured to Veronica's uniform. “Are you a nurse?” 

 

“Back in the real world, I’m a school teacher. But, in this life, I work in triage with the infantry. The Red Cross needed some volunteers for a gig out in Garda, and I thought it might be nice to see the mountains before the Germans try to raze them. When my cousin told me he was coming out here to do some U.S.O. work, it seemed like kismet.”

 

“Garda, eh?” Tom Griffith crossed his legs and retrieved a pipe from a case in his coat pocket. “That's my outfit.”

 

“Are you a surgeon, Dr. Griffith?”

 

“I’m a surgeon, yes, but I act more as a facilitator nowadays.” 

 

Ron’s gaze narrowed. “A facilitator in what capacity, if you don’t mind me prying?”

 

Griffith gestured to his pipe. “You don't mind, do you?”

 

“Of course not, my father is quite fond of the pipe, as well.” Veronica reached over and unlatched the window to let in the breeze and returned her focus to the older man. “You were saying something about facilitation?”

 

“Refugees.” He punctuated the word with the strike of his match. “Lots and lots of refugees. So many, in fact, we’ve had to import far more medical supplies then we normally would. I just hope it’s enough.”

 

Ron’s jaw tensed at the news. “You're transporting all of the supplies yourself?”

 

“Some.” Griffith took a few, leisurely puffs of his pipe, making her wait. “High-value items have a tendency to go missing and then pop up later on the black market. We wouldn’t want the Krauts to get their hands on some of this stuff.”

 

Logan swallowed hard at the casual admission. The doctor sure was brazen, but then in Logan’s experience, most con-men were.

 

“It’s not anything too hazardous, I hope.” Ron offset the concern in her voice with a smile. “I’d hate to think you were risking your life bringing it on your person?”

 

“This is war, Miss Echolls. We’re risking our lives just sitting on this train.” He released another puff, filling the cabin with smoke.

 

“Daddy is more than a facilitator though; he’s head of the Italian field division for the Red Cross, so he practically wrote the book on how to get supplies through the border safely.” Hannah piped in, cheerfully unaware of the implication her father made about his cargo.

 

“You'll have to forgive her, she's quite proud.” Griffith cast a doting look toward his daughter. 

 

“I have a right to be. Your work is so important to the cause.” Hannah shifted her attention to Logan. “And what brings you to the Front, Mr. Echolls? I believe your cousin mentioned the U.S.O., but you should know there’s quite an opportunity to sell war bonds in this area. It used to be quite wealthy before the invasion.”

 

"I’d like to do my part, like any good American, so I’m sure I could probably squeeze in a little shilling on the side. And please call me Logan, Mr. Echolls was—is—my father.” He spit the last words out, before he thought better of it. 

 

A look of uncomfortable recognition crossed Griffith’s face. “Yes. I do believe I remember you after all. My late wife adored your mother. Harriet always did go in for those Lynn Echolls screwball comedies. She was a beautiful woman. It’s a shame what…happened…with your dad.”

 

And there it was again. The inevitable awkwardness that came whenever the subject of his parents came up. His father never failed to silence a room, the specter of his violent legacy hanging oppressively in the air like an acrid stench.

 

Veronica pushed herself to the edge of her seat and leaned toward Hannah, conspiratorially. “I always preferred Lynn’s musicals, actually.”

 

“Me too.” Hannah radiated empathy, her arm crossing the handrest to offer a reassuring touch Logan’s shoulder. “In fact, I always used to beg my mother to make me a red dress like the one your mother wore in that fountain scene. She looked spectacular in it. There’s a poster of her wearing it on the wall of the Rivoli. You wouldn’t believe the pile of roses left beneath it after she passed, they needed a wheelbarrow to cart them all away. But that dress, that film, it was always my favorite.”

 

Hannah was objectively a good, decent person, if tragically naive. Logan knew right then that she had no knowledge of the horrible dealings her father had been involved with, what had been going on right in front of her. He felt a sudden swell of protectiveness.

 

“That’s actually—it's my favorite, too,” He said, squeezing the hand she’d left on his arm.

 

“I never really went in for the cinema, myself.” Griffith’s eyes dropped to where Logan’s hand rested on hers and he pulled it away. 

 

“I assume you're staying in Riva del Garda while you're here?” Veronica looked to Hannah for an answer.

 

“The Lido Palace. You?”

 

“Same, actually.” Logan whistled low under his breath. “Pretty swank digs.”

 

Hannah laughed. “That's what I told daddy, but he wouldn't hear of going anywhere else for safety reasons. They apparently have private security there and cleared out most of their wine cellar to use as a bomb shelter.”

 

Griffiths nodded. “I always say, you can't put a price on safety.”

 

“Do no harm,” Ron said, carefully, one hand balled deep into the pocket of her skirt. “You took the Hippocratic Oath. I’m not surprised you care about everyone’s safety.”

 

“You know a surprising amount about the medical profession for a volunteer nurse.” Griffith’s face twitched into a strained smile. 

 

“Things worth doing are worth doing well.” Ron appeared upbeat, but Logan noticed the vein in her neck tensing. “At least, that’s what my brother used to say.”

 

Griffith stood up and walked to the window to tap out his pipe. “I wouldn’t mind having a girl like you on my team. You’re definitely somebody worth keeping an eye on.”

 

“I’d be honored,” Ron whispered, before turning her attention back to Hannah. “You know, since we’re staying at the same hotel, perhaps you’d both like to meet us for a drink sometime? That is if you think you'll have time?”

 

Hannah was practically vibrating out of her skin with excitement. “We'd love to, wouldn't we, daddy?” she asked his retreating form rhetorically. “We’ll be staying six weeks at the very least, and you're the only people I've met so far, so my social calendar is wide open.”

 

“It's a date, then.” Logan smiled shyly in her direction before catching Ron’s eye.

 

* * *

 

An overeager bellhop emerged from Ron’s hotel room after taking her bags inside, then grabbed Logan’s bag on the way to unlock his door. “Prego, Signore Echolls, prego!” 

 

"Grazie.” Logan deposited a few liras into the boy’s hand and took his bag back, ushering him away. “I think we can take it from here.”

 

Ron lingered for a moment in the doorway of her room. "I guess I'll be seeing you later, then?”

 

Logan leaned casually against his own doorframe and stage-whispered to her several feet away, “Better tamp that enthusiasm, my 'kissing cousin', what would the neighbors say?”

 

She shook her head, utterly scandalized. "Believe me, hearing you utter the phrase ‘kissing cousin’ is enough to kill any enthusiasm I had for you dead.”

 

A laugh bubbled up from his throat. “It’s still not uncommon in some circles, marrying your cousin. For example, did you know that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt are cousins?”

 

“Yeah, fifth cousins once-removed, and that doesn’t make it any more tempting.”

 

“Oh come on,” he smiled, enjoying the way she always bit her bottom lip whenever he teased her. “You wouldn’t even have to change your surname…”

 

Her face scrunched up in disgust. “On that note, I’m going to go powder my nose.”

 

She shot him one last look over her shoulder before shutting the hotel door behind her.

 

"You'd better tone it down, hombre, or people are gonna think your family is creepier than they already do.” Weevil, who had checked into the room across the hall from him earlier, leaned against its door, rhythmically flipping a room key in his hand.

 

Logan raised an eyebrow. “I can't imagine how that's even possible.”

 

Weevil rubbed a hand over his mouth, something he often did when he had something on his mind that he didn't want to share.

 

“You fret more than a schoolmarm, you know that?” Logan dragged his feet across the hall, dreading the conversation. “Just say whatever it is you're going to say already so I can wash this day off me.”

 

Weevil pulled himself from an internal debate and answered Logan with a nod. “Just, be careful with that, okay?” He lifted his chin toward Ron’s door, then quickly checked the hallway for lurkers before speaking again. "You're playing with fire, and I've seen men get their cover burned out in the field by less.”

 

"Come on,” Logan quietly scoffed. “She's pretending to be my _cousin_. That’s not even going to cross people’s minds. Certainly not somebody like Hannah Griffith.”

 

“Ain’t nobody looks at their cousin that way who don’t live in the Appalachians, Gibson. Your smile, man.” Weevil threw his keys into the air one last time before using them to unlock his door. "You know, it's amazing you’re as famous as you are when you're such a lousy actor.” Weevil leveled him with a warning look before disappearing into his room. The click of his door lock echoed through the empty hallway.

 

Was he really that obvious? Enough that Hannah would suspect something untoward was happening?

 

Logan touched his lips, self-consciously.

 

 _No_ , he thought. She was too innocent to ever think that way. Her father, though…Logan knew from personal experience that people good at keeping secrets were usually equally as good at spotting them.

 

* * *

 

Hooking his hat onto the coatrack, Logan shut and locked the door behind him as he stepped into the palatial guest room. The bathroom immediately off to the right was all marble and gilt with a deep soaking tub, like a Roman nobleman’s bathhouse. He walked toward the bed and let his fingertips drift along the top of the sheets, the sateen weave was soft yet crisp, obscenely expensive. He passed an ornately carved armoire and desk on his way to check out the view. His fingers parted the salmon, brocade curtains and his breath caught in his throat. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors opened onto a quaint terrace that overlooked majestic Lake Garda below.

 

It was the nicest place he'd stayed since leaving the United States. It might be the nicest place he had ever stayed. If he wasn’t on assignment, if America weren’t at war, it’s exactly the kind of place he’d like to lose himself in. Ideally, with her.

 

He strode with purpose toward their adjoining door, flicked the lock and pulled it open.

 

Ron’s side of the adjoining room was already ajar. He noticed her standing at her window, now clad in just a pale, blue slip with her hair loose. She pressed the side of her head against the glass, admiring the evening view of the water, the last rays of sunset casting an orange glow across her milk-white skin.

 

Before she even spoke, Logan could tell that something was off.

 

“It’s something, isn’t it?” She spoke without tearing her gaze once from the lake. “I almost feel guilty for enjoying anything beautiful when so many people are out there suffering.”

 

“You shouldn’t. We all need to take comfort where we can more now than ever.” He took a tentative step forward, but stopped himself, unsure if he was welcome.

 

Her eyes slid to where he was standing and she nodded once. “I suppose it’s things like this that we’re fighting for.”

 

Taking her response as a sign he’d been given permission, Logan’s shoulders relaxed and he slowly approached her. “Are you okay?”

 

She shrugged, then let out a sad laugh. “I shouldn’t be surprised —not after all I’ve seen—what human beings are willing to do to make a buck, but Tom Griffith works for an organization whose main goal is to ease world suffering and if he’s successful in his endeavor, he’ll be responsible for so much pain.”

 

“We’ll get him, Ron.” Logan placed a hand on her lower back and she leaned into his touch. His fingers drifted over her back in comforting shapes, wrinkling the silk of her chemise. “Griffith is smart, but he’s a middleman. We flip him and we can get the man at the top of the food chain. We can end this.”

 

“I like that about you, that you still think we can make a difference.” Ron turned to look at him, her eyes burning with righteous indignation. As a spy, she wore a lot of masks, but right now he was seeing the real her. It felt like progress.

 

He gently cupped the sides of her face and her features softened. “This isn’t just about Griffith, is it?”

 

She was caught off guard by his question, and for a split-second, her mask slipped back into place, but then her gaze connected with his and she sighed. “He’s out there, somewhere, Logan, could be right under our noses for all I know. He could be d-dead, and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”

 

He pulled her into his chest, hand cradling the side of her head. “I know you’re frustrated, but you  _will_ find Wallace.”

 

Ron pulled away with a wry look. “Since when are you a beacon of hope?”

 

“I don’t know,” he said, running his fingers through his hair. “I’m not. I’m the same bitter asshole I’ve always been, but I believe in you, Ron. I believe in the things you can do. You are a force of nature like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And, if Wallace is out there, if he’s alive, you will find him. We will find him.”

 

Her lips parted at his words and the tension in her expression began to lift. “Every time I think you can’t surprise me more…you just…do. All those people out there—your fans who love you, they have no idea what you really are.”

 

“And what am I?” He took a step closer to her, trailing the back of his fingers along the smooth edge of her jaw.

 

She searched his face as if she were looking for clues to solve one of her assignments. “That’s for you to figure out for yourself. It’s why you’re here, isn’t it?”

 

“But you know, don’t you?”

 

“I do.” Ron reached up and pressed two fingertips against the swell of his lips. “And I’m going to help you get there.” 

 

He could barely breathe around her, barely form words. This was normally the kind of feeling he’d run away from, full-force, but despite his fear, he leaned even closer. “We’re going to help each other.”

 

“Yes.” Her eyes filled with unshed tears and she smiled incongruently. “Yes. I think, maybe, that’s why we were brought together.”

 

He held her face in his hands once more. “Ron…”

 

“Please…” She shook her head and took a loud breath before speaking again. “Call me Veronica.”

 

A shock of understanding rippled through him. He grinned and pressed his forehead against hers. “It’s nice to finally meet you, Veronica.”

 

She lifted to her toes and closed their distance, lips sliding against his in a heated, messy kiss. As they pulled apart, the tension between them evaporated as giddy laughter bubbled up between them.

 

“What are we doing?” Her eyes were wild, fingers gripping his hair painfully as she crashed into him again.

 

He liked seeing her like this—unguarded and loose—like a pressure valve had been released, giving her space to breathe.

 

Logan rubbed the tip of his nose against her cheek. “I don’t know.”

 

“This is against every regulation. It’s so stupid, so dangerous, so reckless.” She punctuated each reason not to be with him with another kiss, then hopped up and wrapped her legs around his waist.

 

He grabbed Veronica’s thighs to prevent them from slipping and pinned her back to the glass window for stability. “Listen, I don’t care what happens to me, but I refuse to do anything that’s going to get you killed. So—if this really is putting you at risk, you need to tell me now, Veronica.”

 

A slow smile crept across her face. “Say my name again.”

 

Logan rolled his eyes, but he couldn’t help returning her smile. “I’m serious.”

 

“I’m tired of serious.” She looked up at him, jaw set in a purposeful line. “I want this. I haven’t let myself have anything good for so long. And, maybe you’re right...that we need to take comfort where we can.”

 

His head was swimming. He had dreamed of a moment like this for weeks, he wanted desperately to give her what she needed, but he refused to be an outlet for somebody else’s pain again. He’d spent too much of his life doing that and it had brought him nothing but misery. He didn’t want to resent her like he had Lilly; she was worth so much more to him than that. He had to be sure she was doing this for the right reasons.

 

Logan carried her to the bed and sat down on the edge of the mattress, still holding her in his lap. “You need _this_?”

 

A thoughtful look flickered across her face and she shook her head. “No. I need _you_.”

 

He kissed her again, but it was different this time: slow, wet, heady, lacking the early urgency they’d shared before, then turned around and dropped her onto the mattress, taking a moment to hover above her and enjoy the view. “I’m going to make you feel good,” He promised, leaning forward to rest his arms on either side of her body.

 

She exhaled a shaky breath. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”  

 

“Afraid of me?” He lifted her chemise above her head, kissing a path from her navel up to the side of her neck before tossing it to the floor. “I thought you were supposed to be some sort of tough guy.”

 

With an offended huff, she sat up and began to unfasten the buttons on his shirt, leaving a trail of kisses in their wake as she eased the sleeves from his shoulders. “The last time I was with somebody—“

 

“Troy?” he supplied, through gritted teeth. “I’d really love to sock that guy in the face.”

 

“Me too.” Her nose wrinkled at the memory. “And I know you’re not Troy, but it’s because of Troy—“

 

“—that you lost Wallace. I get it.” He tucked a stray hair behind her ear and then reached for her hands. “You’re scared that I’m going to distract you, that you’re going to make stupid mistakes.”

 

“You already do. I’ve shared way too much about myself with you already. I’ve made blunders in the field…I don’t want anybody else to get hurt because of me.” She looked down at their joined hands and shook her head as if silently berating herself.

 

Logan lowered her back down, then removed his undershirt and covered her body with his own, enjoying the pleasant slide of their bare skin. “I meant what I said. If you think I’m putting you in danger in any way, I’ll leave. Hell, I’ll even go AWOL.” He kissed her forehead, lips lingering there longer than necessary. “All I care about is you, Veronica.”

 

“That’s...” Veronica's voice trailed off, her eyes squeezing shut at his admission.

 

Logan licked into the hollow of Veronica’s throat and dragged his tongue down the valley of her chest, and just as he reached her pelvis they were stopped by a loud banging sound.

 

“Hello?” a female voice chirped just outside her room.

 

“Shit,” Veronica whispered, pulling Logan up by his hair. “Go hide in your room. Quickly!”

 

Logan grimaced as he sprung awkwardly from the bed, gait slowed by his painful arousal. He quickly grabbed his shirts and walked awkwardly to their shared door.

 

“One minute, please!” Veronica called out as she frantically pulled her chemise on inside out and searched the hotel room for a robe, finally finding one on the door peg in her bathroom and putting it on.

 

Veronica took a moment to center herself, then glanced warningly at Logan.

 

He nodded and pulled their adjoining door closed, save for an inch.

 

As soon as he was out of sight, Veronica opened her front door.

 

“Oh!” Hannah exclaimed, voice filled with shock and embarrassment. “Golly, I am so sorry, Veronica. I didn’t mean to catch you in your altogether.”

 

Veronica laughed and tugged the other woman inside the room by her hand. “Don’t be silly. It’s just us girls here, right? I’m sure we’ve both seen more skin than this in the field.”

 

“True.” Hannah seemed hesitant but allowed Veronica to drag her fully inside. “I just figured you’d be settled by now. It took daddy forever to get our bags upstairs because he insisted on doing it all himself. Honestly, he’s such a martyr sometimes.”

 

“Well, all men can get stupid like that, can’t they?” Veronica sat on the edge of her mattress and gestured for Hannah to take the desk chair. “I’m happy to see you though. I would’ve probably looked you up myself once I’d unpacked.”

 

Hannah’s eyes swept the room, brow bunching in curiosity as she took in the rumpled coverlet on the bed before her gaze returned to Veronica. “I’m glad to hear that because I was wondering if you had plans yet for tonight? Daddy is meeting a business contact at the Hotel Metropole Bellagio near Lake Como and is forcing me to accompany him. I’m afraid I’ll be bored to tears unless I have somebody interesting to talk to.”

 

“Are you asking me to join you?”

 

“That’s the idea. It’d be great to have a distraction and daddy said it would be fine.” Hannah paused for a moment in thought, biting her bottom lip. “Your cousin is invited too if you think he’d be interested…?”

 

Veronica leaned forward, conspiratorially. “Well, between you and me, he’s probably a little too interested.”

 

“Um.” Hannah blushed aggressively. “I guess I’ll see you both there, then?”

 

“Thanks for the invitation, we’d love to. What time shall we meet you?” Veronica rose to her feet, signaling the end of the conversation.

 

“Our driver is picking us up at 7:30. We could all ride over together if you’d like?” Hannah shuffled slowly to the door.

 

Veronica placed her hand on the doorknob and started to turn, “Actually, Logan’s security man usually drives him where he needs to be, but we could meet you at the Metropole Bellagio’s outdoor bar at eight if that works?”

 

Logan smiled at her ability to think so quickly on her feet. He was surprised she could name any locations in the area but then remembered the dossier she'd had her nose pressed in during the first hour of their train trip. This would buy them the time they needed to do some reconnaissance on the man Griffith was meeting beforehand and prepare a game strategy. He decided then that her intelligence was possibly the most attractive thing about her.

 

“Perfect!” Hannah said, practically flooding the room with her happy mood. “Daddy doesn’t understand why it’s so important to me, but there’s a shortage of American girls out on the war front and it can get lonely being the only one. Sometimes, I’d just once rather talk about movies than medical supplies, if you know what I mean?”  

 

“I do.” Veronica opened the door to let Hannah through. “It’s a long, stressful war and the only way to get through it without cracking it to have a little fun every now and again. Don’t feel guilty about wanting that, Hannah.”

 

“I like you, Veronica Echolls. I think we’re going to be fast friends.” Hannah smiled and fondly touched Veronica’s shoulder as she left the room.

 

Logan emerged from the other doorway as soon as he heard the safety chain lock into place. “I practically got a toothache from that conversation.”

 

Veronica leaned against the closed front door and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, you’d better up your glucose tolerance, Casanova, because, from this point forward, you are a smitten man.”

 

“I am a smitten man.” He crossed the room, stopping in front of her, and traced the skin at the edge of the neckline of her robe with his fingertip. “I’ve never much gone in for sweet, though.”

 

She glanced down at his finger with amusement. “Are you saying I’m not sweet?”

 

His head tipped side to side, as he pretended to deliberate. “Only when you really want to be.”

 

Veronica stilled his hand with her own. “This is not one of those times, Logan. I need to get a message to Mac and you need to put on that white tuxedo that makes me weak in the knees.”

 

“What are you going to wear?” He broke free of her fingers and curved his hand around the side of her neck. “That green number with the slit?”

 

“Logan!” She shot him an exasperated look and slipped out from under his arms. “You need to stop looking at me like that! That is not the way cousins are supposed to look at each other.”

 

“What are you talking about?” He licked his lips, savoring the hint of her skin from before, and smirked. “I’m looking at you exactly like our commander and chief looks at his beloved wife.” Something about that statement cut a little too close to the bone, and Logan found himself faltering. "I-I didn't--"

 

"Shh," Veronica whispered, taking pity on him. "We don't have time for one of your Hamlet moments right now." She grabbed him by the hips and pushed him toward their connecting doorway. Just as his feet crossed the threshold between their rooms, she paused and spun him around, then pressed a rough kiss against his mouth before shutting the door in his face.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you sticking with this story, I appreciate each and every one of you. If you have the time and the energy, please shoot me a comment and let me know what you thought of it (I could use the feedback and encouragement). 
> 
> Many familiar faces will be showing up soon (I promise you'll see Keith soon!) and the plot only gets crazier from here!

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't be shy about hitting me up on Tumblr at Happilyshanghaied


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